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FROM  CAPETOWN 

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G.   W.   STEEVENS. 


FROM    CAPETOWN 


LADYSMITH 


AN    UNFINISHED    RECORD    OF    THE   SOUTH 
AFRICAN    IV AR 


G.  W.  STEEVENS 

AUTHOR  OF  "  WITH  KITCHENER  TO  KHARTUM," 
"IN  INDIA,"  ETC.,  ETC. 


EDITED  BY 

VERNON   BLACKBURN 


NEW  YORK 

DODD,    MEAD   AND  COMPANY 

1900 


J  *.     > 


Copyright,  1899,  igco, 

BV 

G.  W.  STEEVENS. 


Copyright,  1900, 

BY 

DODD,  MEAD  &  COMPANY. 


THE  MERSHON   COMPANY   PRESS, 
RAHWAY,    N.   J. 


4 

J 


XT' 


CONTENTS, 


A- 


V 


CHAPTER 

I.  First  Glimpse  of  the  Struggle, 

II.  The  Army  Corps — Has  Not  Left  England 

III.  A  Pastor's  Point  of  View, 

IV.  Will  It  Be  Civil  War  ? 
V.  Loyal  Aliwal  :  A  Tragi-Comedy 

VI.  The  Battle  of  Elandslaagte, 

VII.  The  Bivouac, 

VIII,  The  Home-Coming  from  Dundee 

IX.  The  Story  of  Nicholson's  Nek, 

X.  The  Guns  at  Rietfontein, 

XI.  The  Bombardment, 

XII.  The  Devil's  Tin-Tacks, 

XIII.  A  Diary  of  Dulness, 

XIV.  Nearing  the  End, 

XV.  In  a  Conning-Tower, 
The  Last  Chapter,    . 


PAGE 
I 

II 

21 

31 

39 
48 

63 
74 

82 

90 
102 

"5 
124 

135 
146 

157 


2: 


.2 


FROM  CAPETOWN  TO  LADY- 
SMITH. 


CHAPTER     I. 

FIRST  GLIMPSE  OF  THE  STRUGGLE. 

Capetown,  October  lo. 

This  morning  I  awoke,  and  behold  the 
Norman  was  lying  alongside  a  wharf  at 
Capetown.  I  had  expected  it,  and  yet  it 
was  a  shock.  In  this  breathless  age  ten 
days  out  of  sight  of  land  is  enough  to 
make  you  a  merman  :  I  looked  with 
pleased  curiosity  at  the  grass  and  the 
horses. 

After  the  surprise  of  being  ashore 
again,  the  first  thing  to  notice  was  the 
air.  It  was  as  clear — but  there  is  nothing 
else  in  existence  clear  enough  with  which 


2  FROM   CAPETOWN  TO   LADYSMITH. 

to  compare  it.  You  felt  that  all  your 
life  hitherto  you  had  been  breathing  mud 
and  looking  out  on  the  world  through 
fog.     This,  at  last,  was  air,  was  ether. 

Right  in  front  rose  three  purple-brown 
mountains — the  two  supporters  peaked, 
and  Table  Mountain  flat  in  the  centre. 
More  like  a  coffin  than  a  table,  sheer 
steep  and  dead  flat,  he  was  exactly  as  he 
is  in  pictures  ;  and  as  I  gazed,  I  saw  his 
tablecloth  of  white  cloud  gather  and  hang 
on  his  brow. 

It  was  enough  :  the  white  line  of  houses 
nestling  hardly  visible  between  his  foot 
and  the  sea  must  indeed  be  Capetown. 

Presently  I  came  into  it,  and  began  to 
wonder  what  it  looked  like.  It  seemed 
half  Western  American  with  a  faint  smell 
of  India — Denver  with  a  dash  of  Delhi. 
The  broad  streets  fronted  with  new-look- 
ing, ornate  buildings  of  irregular  heights 
and  fronts  were  Western  America ;  the 
battle  of  warming  sun  with  the  stabbing 


FIRST   GLIMPSE   OF   THE   STRUGGLE.  3 

morning  cold  was  Northern  India.  The 
handsome,  blood-like  electric  cars,  with 
their  impatient  gongs  and  racing  trolleys, 
were  pure  America  (the  motormen  were 
actually  imported  from  that  hustling  clime 
to  run  them).  For  Capetown  itself — you 
saw  it  in  a  moment — does  not  hustle. 
The  machinery  is  the  West's,  the  spirit  is 
the  East's  or  the  South's.  In  other  cities 
with  trolley-cars  they  rush ;  here  they 
saunter.  In  other  new  countries  they 
have  no  time  to  be  polite ;  here  they  are 
suave  and  kindly  and  even  anxious  to 
gossip.  I  am  speaking,  understand,  on  a 
twelve  hours'  acquaintance — mainly  with 
that  large  section  of  Capetown's  inhabit- 
ants that  handled  my  baggage  between 
dock  and  railway-station.  The  niggers 
are  very  good-humoured,  like  the  darkies 
of  America.  The  Dutch  tongue  sounds 
like  German  spoken  by  people  who  will 
not  take  the  trouble  to  finish  pronounc- 
ing it. 


4  FROM   CAPETOWN   TO    LADYSMITII. 

All  in  all,  Capetown  gives  you  the  idea 
of  being  neither  very  rich  nor  very  poor, 
neither  over-industrious  nor  over-lazy, 
decently  successful,  reasonably  happy, 
whole-heartedly  easy-going. 

The  public  buildings — what  I  saw  of 
them — confirm  the  idea  of  a  placid  half- 
prosperity.  The  place  is  not  a  baby,  but 
it  has  hardly  taken  the  trouble  to  grow 
up.  It  has  a  post-office  of  truly  German 
stability  and  magnitude.  It  has  a  well- 
organised  railway  station,  and  it  has  the 
merit  of  being  in  Adderley  Street,  the 
main  thoroughfare  of  the  city  ;  imagine  it 
even  possible  to  bring  Euston  into  the 
Strand,  and  you  will  get  an  idea  of  the 
absence  of  push  and  crush  in  Cape- 
town. 

When  you  go  on  to  look  at  Govern- 
ment House  the  place  keeps  its  character  ; 
Government  House  is  half  a  country 
house  and  half  a  country  inn.  One  sen- 
try tramps  outside  the  door,  and  you  pay 


FIRST   GLIMPSE   OF  THE   STRUGGLE.  5 

your  respects  to  the  Governor  in   shep- 
herd's plaid. 

Over  everything  brooded  peace,  except 
over  one  flamboyant  many-winged  build- 
ing of  red  brick  and  white  stone  with  a 
garden  about  it,  an  avenue — a  Capetown 
avenue,  shady  trees  and  cool  but  not 
large  :  attractive  and  not  imposing — at 
one  side  of  it,  with  a  statue  of  the  Queen 
before  and  broad-flagged  stairs  behind. 
It  was  the  Parliament  House.  The 
Legislative  Assembly — their  House  of 
Commons — was  characteristically  small, 
yet  characteristically  roomy  and  charac- 
teristically comfortable.  The  members 
sit  on  flat  green-leather  cushions,  two  or 
three  on  a  bench,  and  each  man's  name 
is  above  his  seat :  no  jostling  for  Cape- 
town. The  slip  of  Press  gallery  is  above 
the  Speaker's  head ;  the  sloping  un- 
crowded  public  gallery  is  at  the  other 
end,  private  boxes  on  one  side,  big  win- 
dows on  the  other.     Altogether  it  looks 


6  FROM   CAPETOWN   TO    LADYSMITH. 

like  a  copy  of  the  Westminster  original, 
improved  by  leaving  nine-tenths  of  the 
members  and  press  and  public  out. 

Yet  here — alas,  for  placid  Capetown  ! — 
they  were  wrangling.  They  were  wran- 
gling about  the  commandeering  of  gold 
and  the  sjamboking — shamboking,  you 
pronounce  it — of  Johannesburg  refugees. 
There  was  Sir  Gordon  Sprigg,  thrice 
Premier,  grey-bearded,  dignified,  and 
responsible  in  bearing  and  speech,  con- 
versationally reasonable  in  tone.  There 
was  Mr.  Schreiner,  the  Premier,  almost 
boyish  with  plump,  smooth  cheeks  and  a 
dark  moustache.  He  looks  capable,  and 
looks  as  if  he  knows  it  :  he,  too,  is  con- 
versational, almost  jerky,  in  speech,  but 
with  a  flavour  of  bitterness  added  to  his 
reason. 

Everything  sounded  quiet  and  calm 
enough  for  Capetown — yet  plainly  feel- 
ing was  strained  tight  to  snapping.  A 
member  rose  to  put  a  question,  and  pref- 


FIRST  GLIMPSE   OF   THE   STRUGGLE.  7 

aced  it  with  a  brief  invective  against  all 
Boers  and  their  friends.  He  would  go  on 
for  about  ten  minutes,  when  suddenly 
angry  cries  of  "  Order  ! "  in  English  and 
Dutch  would  rise.  The  questioner  com- 
mented with  acidity  on  the  manners  of 
his  opponents.  They  appealed  to  the 
chair  :  the  Speaker  blandly  pronounced 
that  the  hon.  orentleman  had  been  out 
of  order  from  the  first  word  he  uttered. 
The  hon.  gentleman  thereon  indignantly 
refused  to  put  his  question  at  all  ;  but, 
being  prevailed  to  do  so,  gave  an  opening 
to  a  Minister,  who  devoted  ten  minutes 
to  a  brief  invective  against  all  Uitlanders 
and  their  friends.  Then  up  got  one  of 
the  other  side — and  so  on  for  an  hour. 
Most  delicious  of  all  was  a  white-haired 
German,  once  colonel  in  the  Hanoverian 
Leo^ion  which  was  settled  in  the  Eastern 
Province,  and  which  to  this  day  remains 
the  loyallest  of  her  Majesty's  subjects. 
When  the  Speaker  ruled  against  his  side 


8  FROM    CAPETOWN   TO    LADYSMITH. 

he  counselled  defiance  in  a  resounding 
whisper;  when  an  opponent  was  speak- 
ing he  snorted  thunderous  derision ; 
when  an  opponent  retorted  he  smiled 
blandly  and  admonished  him  :  "  Ton't 
lose  yer  demper." 

In  the  Assembly,  if  nowhere  else, 
rumbled  the  menace  of  coming  war. 

One  other  feature  there  was  that  was 
not  Capetown.  Along  Adderley  Street, 
before  the  steamship  companies'  offices, 
loafed  a  thick  string  of  sun-reddened,  un- 
shaven, flannel-shirted,  corduroy-trousered 
British  workingmen.  Inside  the  offices 
they  thronged  the  counters  six  deep. 
Down  to  the  docks  they  filed  steadily  with 
bundles  to  be  penned  in  the  black  hulls 
of  homeward  liners.  Their  words  were 
few  and  sullen.  These  were  the  miners 
of  the  Rand — who  floated  no  companies, 
held  no  shares,  made  no  fortunes,  who 
only  wanted  to  make  a  hundred  pounds 
to  furnish  a  cottage  and  marry  a  girl. 


FIRST  GLIMPSE   OF  THE   STRUGGLE.  9 

They  had  been  turned  out  of  work, 
packed  in  cattle-trucks,  and  had  come 
down  in  sun  by  day,  and  icy  wind  by 
night,  empty-bellied,  to  pack  off  home 
again.  Faster  than  the  shiploads  could 
steam  out  the  trainloads  steamed  in. 
They  choked  the  lodging-houses,  the 
bars,  the  streets.  Capetown  was  one 
huge  demonstration  of  the  unemployed. 
In  the  hotels  and  streets  wandered  the 
pale,  distracted  employers.  They  hur- 
ried hither  and  thither  and  arrived  no- 
whither ;  they  let  their  cigars  go  out,  left 
their  glasses  half  full,  broke  off  their  talk 
in  the  middle  of  a  word.  They  spoke 
now  of  intolerable  grievance  and  hoarded 
revenge,  now  of  silent  mines,  rusting  ma- 
chinery, stolen  gold.  They  held  their 
houses  in  Johannesburg  as  gone  beyond 
the  reach  of  insurance.  They  hated 
Capetown,  they  could  not  tear  them- 
selves away  to  England,  they  dared  not 
return  to  the  Rand. 


lO         FROM   CAPETOWN  TO   LADYSMITH. 

This  little  quiet  corner  of  Capetown 
held  the  throbbing  hopes  and  fears  of  all 
Johannesburg  and  more  than  half  the  two 
Republics  and  the  mass  of  all  South 
Africa. 

None  doubted — though  many  tried  to 
doubt — that  at  last  it  was — war.  They 
paused  an  instant  before  they  said  the 
word,  and  spoke  it  softly.  It  had  come 
at  last — the  moment  they  had  worked 
and  waited  for,  and  they  knew  not 
whether  to  exult  or  to  despair. 


CHAPTER    II. 

THE    ARMY    CORPS — HAS    NOT    LEFT 
ENGLAND. 

Stormberg  Junction. 
The  wind  screams  down  from  the 
naked  hills  on  to  the  little  junction  sta- 
tion. A  platform  with  dining-room  and 
telegraph  office,  a  few  corrugated  iron 
sheds,  the  station-master's  corrugated 
iron  bungalow — and  there  is  nothing  else 
of  Stormberg  but  veldt  and  kopje,  wind 
and  sky.  Only  these  last  days  there  has 
sprung  up  a  little  patch  of  white  tents  a 
quarter  of  a  mile  from  the  station,  and 
about  them  move  men  in  putties  and 
khaki.  Signal  flags  blink  from  the  rises, 
pickets  with  fixed  bayonets  dot  the 
ridges,  mounted  men  in  couples  patrol 
the    plain   and  the   dip   and   the   slope. 


12         FROM    CAPETOWN   TO   LADYSMITH. 

Four  companies  of  the  Berkshire  Regi- 
ment and  the  mounted  infantry  section — 
in  all  they  may  count  400  men.  Fifty 
miles  north  is  the  Orange  River,  and 
beyond  it,  maybe  by  now  this  side  of  it, 
thousands  of  armed  and  mounted  burgh- 
ers— and  war. 

I  wonder  if  it  is  all  real  ?  By  the  clock 
I  have  been  travelling  something  over 
forty  hours  in  South  Africa,  but  it  might 
just  as  well  be  a  minute  or  a  lifetime.  It 
is  a  minute  of  experience  prolonged  to  a 
lifetime.  South  Africa  is  a  dream — one 
of  those  dreams  in  which  you  live  years 
in  the  instant  of  waking — a  dream  of  dis- 
tance. 

Departing  from  Capetown  by  night,  I 
awoke  in  the  Karroo.  Between  nine  and 
six  in  the  morning  we  had  made  less  than 
a  hundred  and  eighty  miles.  Now  we 
were  climbing  the  vast  desert  of  the 
Karroo,  the  dusty  stairway  that  leads  on 
to  the  highlands  of  South  Africa.     Once 


THE  ARMY   CORPS.  1 3 

you  have  seen  one  desert,  all  the  others 
are  like  it ;  and  yet  once  you  have  loved 
the  desert,  each  is  lovable  in  a  new  way. 
In  the  Karroo  you  seem  to  be  going  up 
a  winding  ascent,  like  the  ramps  that 
lead  to  an  Indian  fortress.  You  are  ever 
pulling  up  an  incline  between  hills,  mak- 
ing for  a  corner  round  one  of  the  ranges. 
You  feel  that  when  you  get  round  that 
corner  you  will  at  last  see  something : 
you  arrive  and  only  see  another  incline, 
two  more  ranges,  and  another  corner — 
surely  this  time  with  something  to  arrive 
at  beyond.  You  arrive  and  arrive,  and 
once  more  you  arrive — and  once  more 
you  see  the  same  vast  nothing  you  are 
coming  from. 

Believe  it  or  not,  that  is  the  very 
charm  of  a  desert — the  unfenced  empti- 
ness, the  space,  the  freedom,  the  unbroken 
arch  of  the  sky.  It  is  forever  fooling 
you,  and  yet  you  forever  pursue  it. 
And  then  it  is  only  to  the  eye  that  can- 


14         FROM    CAPETOWN   TO    LADYSMITH. 

not  do  without  green  that  the  Karroo  is 
unbeautiful.  Every  other  colour  meets 
others  in  harmony — tawny  sand,  silver- 
grey  scrub,  crimson-tufted  flowers  like 
heather,  black  ribs  of  rock,  puce  shoots 
of  screes,  violet  mountains  in  the  middle 
distance,  blue  fairy  battlements  guarding 
the  horizon.  And  above  all  broods  the 
intense  purity  of  the  South  African 
azure — not  a  coloured  thing,  like  the 
plants  and  the  hills,  but  sheer  colour 
existing  by  and  for  itself. 

It  is  sheer  witching  desert  for  five  hun- 
dred miles,  and  for  aught  I  know  five 
hundred  miles  after  that.  At  the  rare 
stations  you  see  perhaps  one  corrugated- 
iron  store,  perhaps  a  score  of  little  stone 
houses  with  a  couple  of  churches.  The 
land  carries  little  enough  stock — here  a 
dozen  goats  browsing  on  the  withered 
sticks  goats  love,  there  a  dozen  ostriches, 
high-stepping,  supercilious  heads  in  air, 
wheeling  like  a  troop  of  cavdlry  and  trot- 


THE   ARMY   CORPS.  1$ 

ing  out  of  the  stink  of  that  beastly  train. 
Of  men,  nothing — only  here  at  the  bridge 
a  couple  of  tents,  there  at  the  culvert  a 
black  man,  grotesque  in  sombrero  and 
patched  trousers,  loafing,  hands  in 
pockets,  lazy  pipe  in  mouth.  The  last 
man  in  the  world,  you  would  have  said, 
to  suggest  glorious  war — yet  war  he 
meant  and  nothing  else.  On  the  line 
from  Capetown  —  that  single  track 
through  five  hundred  miles  of  desert — 
hang  Kimberley  and  Mafeking  and  Rho- 
desia :  it  runs  through  Dutch  country  and 
the  black  man  was  there  to  watch  it. 

War — and  war  sure  enough  it  was.  A 
telegram  at  a  tea-bar,  a  whisper,  a  gather- 
ing rush,  an  electric  vibration — and  all 
the  station  and  all  the  train  and  the  very 
niggers  on  the  dunghill  outside  knew  it. 
War — war  at  last !  Everybody  had  pre- 
dicted it — and  now  everybody  gasped 
with  amazement.  One  man  broke  off  in 
a  joke  about  killing  Dutchmen,  and  could 


l6    FROM  CAPETOWN  TO  LADYSMITH. 

only  say,  "  My  God — my  God — my 
God!" 

I  too  was  lost,  and  lost  I  remain. 
Where  was  I  to  go  ?  What  was  I  to  do  ? 
My  small  experience  has  been  confined  to 
wars  you  could  put  yours  fingers  on  ;  for 
this  war  I  have  been  looking  long  enough, 
and  have  not  found  it.  I  have  been  ac- 
customed to  wars  with  headquarters,  at 
any  rate  to  wars  with  a  main  body  and  a 
concerted  plan :  but  this  war  in  Cape 
Colony  has  neither. 

It  could  not  have  either.  If  you  look 
at  the  map  you  will  see  that  the  Trans- 
vaal and  Orange  Free  State  are  all  but 
lapped  in  the  red  of  British  territory. 
That  would  be  to  our  advantage  were  our 
fighting  force  superior  or  equal  or  even 
not  much  inferior  to  that  of  the  enemy. 
In  a  general  way  it  is  an  advantage  to 
have  your  frontier  in  the  form  of  a  re- 
entrant angle ;  for  then  you  can  strike  on 
your  enemy's  flank  and  threaten  his  com- 


THE   ARMY   CORPS.  17 

munications.  That  advantage  the  Boers 
possess  against  Natal,  and  that  is  why 
Sir  George  White  has  abandoned  Lang's 
Nek  and  Newcastle,  and  holds  the  line  of 
the  Biggarsberg ;  even  so  the  Boers 
might  conceivably  get  between  him  and 
his  base.  The  same  advantage  we  should 
possess  on  this  western  side  of  the  theatre 
of  war,  except  that  we  are  so  heavily  out- 
numbered, and  have  adopted  no  heroic 
plan  of  abandoning  the  indefensible.  We 
have  an  irregular  force  of  mounted  in- 
fantry at  Mafeking,  the  Loyal  North  Lan- 
cashire Regiment  at  Kimberley,  the  Mun- 
ster  Fusiliers  at  De  Aar,  half  the  York- 
shire Light  Infantry  at  De  Aar,  half 
the  Berkshire  Regiment  at  Naauwpoort 
— do  not  try  to  pronounce  it — and  the 
other  half  here  at  Stormberg.  The 
Northumberlands — the  famous  Fighting 
Fifth — came  crawling  up  behind  our 
train,  and  may  now  be  at  Naauwpoort 
or  De  Aar.     Total:  say,  4100  infantry, 


1 8         FROM   CAPETOWN   TO   LADYSMITH. 

of  whom  some  600  mounted  ;  no  cavalry, 
no  field-guns.  The  Boer  force  available 
against  these  isolated  positions  might  be 
very  reasonably  put  at  12,000  mounted 
infantry,  with  perhaps  a  score  of  guns. 

Mafeking  and  Kimberley  are  fairly 
well  garrisoned,  with  auxiliary  volunteers, 
and  may  hold  their  own  :  at  any  rate,  I 
have  not  been  there  and  can  say  nothing 
about  them.  But  along  the  southern 
border  of  the  Free  State — the  three 
railway  junctions  of  De  Aar,  Naauwpoort, 
and  Stormberg — our  position  is  very 
dangerous  indeed.  I  say  it  freely,  for 
by  the  time  the  admission  reaches  Eng- 
land it  may  be  needed  to  explain  failure, 
or  pleasant  to  add  lustre  to  success.  If 
the  Army  Corps  were  in  Africa  which  is 
still  in  England,  this  position  would  be  a 
splendid  one  for  it — three  lines  of  supply 
from  Capetown,  Port  Elizabeth,  and  East 
London,  and  three  converging  lines  of 
advance  by  Nerval's  Pont,  Bethulie,  and 


THE   ARMY   CORPS.  I9 

AHwal  North.  But  with  tiny  forces  of  half 
a  battalion  in  front  and  no  support  behind 
— nothing  but  long  lines  of  railway  with 
ungarrisoned  ports  hundreds  of  miles  at 
the  far  end  of  them — it  is  very  dangerous. 
There  are  at  this  moment  no  supports 
nearer  than  England.  Let  the  Free 
Staters  bring  down  two  thousand  good 
shots  and  resolute  men  to-morrow  morn- 
ing— it  is  only  fifty  miles,  with  two  lines 
of  railway — and  what  will  happen  to  that 
little  patch  of  white  tents  by  the  station  ? 
The  loss  of  any  one  means  the  loss  of 
land  connection  between  Western  and 
Eastern  Provinces,  a  line  open  into  the 
heart  of  the  Cape  Colony,  and  nothing  to 
resist  an  invader  short  of  the  sea. 

It  is  dangerous — and  yet  nobody  cares. 
There  is  nothing  to  do  but  wait — for  the 
Army  Corps  that  has  not  yet  left  Eng- 
land. Even  to-day — a  day's  ride  from  the 
frontier — the  war  seems  hardly  real.  All 
will   be  done  that  man  can  do.     In  the 


20         FROM   CAPETOWN  TO   LADYSMITH. 

meantime  the  good  lady  of  the  refresh- 
ment-room says  :  "  Dinner  ?  There's 
been  twenty-one  to-day  and  dinner  got 
ready  for  fifteen  ;  but  you're  welcome  to 
it,  such  as  it  is.  We  must  take  things  as 
they  come  in  war-time."  Her  children 
play  with  their  cats  in  the  passage.  The 
railway  man  busies  himself  about  the  new 
triangles  and  sidings  that  are  to  be  laid 
down  against  the  beginning  of  December 
for  the  Army  Corps  that  has  not  yet  left 
England. 


CHAPTER  III. 
A  pastor's  point  of  view. 

BuRGHERSDORP,  October  14. 

The  village  lies  compact  and  clean-cut, 
a  dot  in  the  wilderness.  No  fields  or 
orchards  break  the  transition  from  man 
to  nature  ;  step  out  of  the  street  and  you 
are  at  once  on  rock-ribbed  kopje  or  ravi' 
veldt.  As  you  stand  on  one  of  the  bare 
lines  of  hill  that  squeeze  it  into  a  narrow 
valley,  Burghersdorp  is  a  chequer-board 
of  white  house,  green  tree,  and  grey  iron 
roof  ;  beyond  its  edges  everything  is  the 
changeless  yellow-brown  of  South  African 
landscape. 

Go  down  into  the  streets,  and  Burghers- 
dorp is  an  ideal  of  Arcady.  The  broad, 
dusty,  unmetalled  roads  are  steeped  in 
sunshine.      The     houses    are     all    one- 


22    FROM  CAPETOWN  TO  LADYSMITH. 

storeyed,  some  brick,  some  mud,  some 
the  eternal  corrugated  iron,  most  faced 
with  whitewash,  many  fronted  with  shady 
verandahs.  As  blinds  against  the  sun 
they  have  lattices  of  trees  down  every 
street — white-blossoming  laburnum,  pop- 
lars, sycamores. 

Despite  verandahs  and  trees,  the  sun- 
shine soaks  down  into  every  corner — 
genially,  languorously  warm.  All  Bur- 
ghersdorp  basks.  You  see  half-a-dozen 
yoke  of  bullocks  with  a  waggon,  stand- 
ing placidly  in  the  street,  too  lazy  even 
to  swish  their  tails  against  the  flies ;  pass 
by  an  hour  later,  and  they  are  still  there, 
and  the  black  man  lounging  by  the 
leaders  has  hardly  shifted  one  leg  ;  pass 
by  at  evening,  and  they  have  moved  on 
three  hundred  yards,  and  are  resting 
again.  In  the  daytime  hens  peck  and 
cackle  in  every  street ;  at  nightfall  the 
bordering  veldt  hums  with  crickets  and 
bullfrogs.     At   morn    comes   a   flight  of 


A  pastor's  point  of  view.  23 

locusts — first  yellow-white  scouts  whirring 
down  every  street,  then  a  pelting  snow- 
storm of  them  high  up  over  the  houses, 
spangling  the  blue  heaven.  But  Bur- 
ghersdorp  cared  nothing.  "There  is 
nothing  for  them,"  said  a  farmer,  with 
cosy  satisfaction  ;  "  the  frost  killed  every- 
thing last  week." 

British  and  Dutch  salute  and  exchange 
the  news  with  lazy  mutual  tolerance. 
The  British  are  storekeepers  and  men  of 
business  ;  the  Boers  ride  in  from  their 
farms.  They  are  big,  bearded  men, 
loose  of  limb,  shabbily  dressed  in  broad- 
brimmed  hats,  corduroy  trousers,  and 
brown  shoes  ;  they  sit  their  ponies  at  a 
rocking-chair  canter  erect  and  easy ;  un- 
kempt, rough,  half-savage,  their  tanned 
faces  and  blue  eyes  express  lazy  good- 
nature, sluggish  stubbornness,  dormant 
fierceness.  They  ask  the  news  in  soft, 
lisping  Dutch  that  might  be  a  woman's ; 
but  the  lazy  imperiousness  of  their  bear- 


24         FROM    CAPETOWN   TO   LADYSMITII. 

ing  stamps  them  as  free  men.  A  people 
hard  to  rouse,  you  say — and  as  hard, 
when  roused,  to  subdue. 

A  loitering  Arcady — and  then  you 
hear  with  astonishment  that  Burghers- 
dorp  is  famous  throughout  South  Africa 
as  a  stronghold  of  bitter  Dutch  partisan- 
ship. "  Rebel  Burghersdorp  "  they  call 
it  in  the  British  centres,  and  Capetown 
turns  anxious  ears  towards  it  for  the  first 
muttering  of  insurrection.  What  history 
its  stagnant  annals  record  is  purely  anti- 
British.  Its  two  principal  monuments, 
after  the  Jubilee  fountain,  are  the  tomb- 
stone of  the  founder  of  the  Dopper 
Church — the  Ironsides  of  South  Africa — 
and  a  statue  with  inscribed  pedestal 
complete  put  up  to  commemorate  the 
introduction  of  the  Dutch  tongue  into 
the  Cape  Parliament.  Malicious  com- 
ments add  that  Afrikander  patriotism 
swindled  the  stone-mason  out  of  ^30, 
and  it  is  certain  that  one  of  the  gentle- 


A  PASTOR  S  POINT  OF  VIEW.  2$ 

men  whose  names  appear  thereon  most 
prominently  now  languishes  in  jail  for 
fraud.  Leaving  that  point  for  thought, 
I  find  that  the  rest  of  Burghersdorp's 
history  consists  in  the  fact  that  the 
Afrikander  Bond  was  founded  here  in 
1 88 1.  And  at  this  moment  Burghers- 
dorp  is  out-Bonding  the  Bond :  the 
reverend  gentleman  who  edits  its  Dutch 
paper  and  dictates  its  Dutch  policy 
sluices  out  weekly  vials  of  wrath  upon 
Hofmeyr  and  Schreiner  for  machinating 
to  keep  patriot  Afrikanders  off  the 
oppressing  Briton's  throat. 

I  went  to  see  this  reverend  pastor, 
who  is  professor  of  a  school  of  Dopper 
theology.  He  was  short,  but  thick-set, 
with  a  short  but  shaggy  grey  beard  ;  in 
deference  to  his  calling,  he  wore  a  collar 
over  his  grey  flannel  shirt,  but  no  tie. 
Nevertheless,  he  turned  out  a  very 
charming,  courteous  old  gentleman,  well 
informed,    and    his    political    bias    was 


26         FROM   CAPETOWN   TO   LADYSMITII. 

mellowed  with  an  irresistible  sense  of 
humour.  He  took  his  own  side  strongly, 
and  allowed  that  it  was  most  proper  for 
a  Briton  to  be  equally  strong  on  his  own. 
And  this  is  more  or  less  what  he  said  : 

"Information?  No,  I  shall  not  give 
you  any :  you  are  the  enemy,  you  see. 
Ha,  ha !  They  call  me  rebel.  But  I 
ask  you,  my  friend,  is  it  natural  that  I — 
I,  Hollander  born,  Dutch  Afrikander 
since  '60 — should  be  as  loyal  to  the 
British  Government  as  a  Britisher 
should  be  ?  No,  I  say ;  one  can  be 
loyal  only  to  one's  own  country.  I  am 
law-abiding  subject  of  the  Queen,  and 
that  is  all  that  they  can  ask  of  me. 

"  How  will  the  war  go  ?  That  it  is 
impossible,  quite  impossible,  to  say. 
The  Boer  might  run  away  at  the  first 
shot  and  he  might  fight  to  the  death. 
All  troops  are  liable  to  panic  ;  even 
regular  troop  ;  much  more  than  irregu- 
lar.    But    I    have    been   on    commando 


A   PASTOR  S  POINT  OF  VIEW.  2/ 

many  times  with  Boer,  and  I  cannot 
think  him  other  than  brave  man.  Fight- 
ing is  not  his  business ;  he  wishes  always 
to  be  back  on  his  farm  with  his  people  ; 
but  he  is  brave  man. 

"  I  look  on  this  war  as  the  sequel  of 
1 88 1.  I  have  told  them  all  these  years, 
it  is  not  finish  ;  war  must  come.  Mr. 
Gladstone,  whom  I  look  on  as  greatest 
British  statesman,  did  wrong  in  1881. 
If  he  had  kept  promises  and  given  back 
country  before  the  war,  we  would  have 
been  grateful  ;  but  he  only  give  it  after 
war,  and  we  were  not  grateful.  And 
English  did  not  feel  that  they  were 
generous,  only  giving  independence  after 
war,  though  they  had  a  large  army  in 
Natal  ;  they  have  always  wished  to  re- 
commence. 

"  The  trouble  is  because  the  Boer  have 
never  had  confidence  in  the  Enorlish  Gov- 
ernment,  just  as  you  have  never  had  con- 
fidence in  us.     The  Boer  have  no  feeling 


28         FROM   CAPETOWN  TO   LADYSMITH. 

about  Cape  Colony,  but  they  have  about 
Natal ;  they  were  driven  out  of  it,  and 
they  think  it  still  their  own  country. 
Then  you  took  the  diamond-fields  from 
the  Free  State.  You  gave  the  Free 
State  independence  only  because  you  did 
not  want  trouble  of  Basuto  war ;  then  we 
beat  the  Basutos — I  myself  was  there, 
and  it  was  very  hard,  and  it  lasted  three 
years — and  then  you  would  not  let  us 
take  Basutoland.  Then  came  annexa- 
tion of  the  Transvaal ;  up  to  that  I  was 
strong  advocate  of  federation,  but  after 
that  I  was  one  of  founders  of  the  Bond. 
After  that  the  Afrikander  trusted  Rhodes 
— not  I,  though  ;  I  always  write  I  dis- 
trust Rhodes — and  so  came  the  Jameson 
raid.  Now  how  could  we  have  confi- 
dence after  all  this  in  British  Govern- 
ment ? 

"  I  do  not  think  Transvaal  Government 
have  been  wise  ;  I  have  many  times  told 
them    so.      They    made    great    mistake 


A  pastor's  point  of  view.  29 

when  they  let  people  come  in  to  the 
mines.  I  told  them,  This  gold  will  be 
your  ruin  ;  to  remain  independent  you 
must  remain  poor.  But  when  that  was 
done,  what  could  they  do  ?  If  they  gave 
the  franchise,  then  the  Republic  is  gov- 
erned by  three  four  men  from  Johannes- 
burg, and  they  will  govern  it  for  their 
own  pocket.  The  Transvaal  Boer  would 
rather  be  British  colony  than  Johannes- 
burg Republic. 

"Well,  well;  it  is  the  law  of  South 
Africa  that  the  Boer  drive  the  native 
north  and  the  English  drive  the  Boer 
north.  But  now  the  Boer  can  go  north 
no  more ;  two  things  stop  him  :  the 
tsetse  fly  and  the  fever.  So  if  he  must 
perish,  it  is  his  duty — yes,  I,  minister, 
say  it  is  his  duty — to  perish  fighting. 

"  But  here  in  the  Colony  we  have  no 
race  hatred.  Not  between  man  and 
man  ;  but  when  many  men  get  together 
there  is  race  hatred.     If  we  fight  here  on 


30         FROM   CAPETOWN  TO   LADYSMITH. 

this  border  it  is  civil  war — the  same 
Dutch  and  Enghsh  are  across  the  Orange 
as  here  in  Albert.  My  son  is  on  com- 
mando in  Free  State ;  the  other  day  he 
ride  thirteen  hours  and  have  no  food  for 
two  days.  I  say  to  him,  *  You  are  Free 
State  burgher ;  you  have  the  benefit  of 
the  country  ;  your  wife  is  Boer  girl ;  it  is 
your  duty  to  fight  for  it'  I  am  law- 
abiding  British  subject,  but  I  hope  my 
son  will  not  be  hurt.  You,  sir,  I  wish 
you  good  luck — good  luck  for  yourself 
and  your  corresponding.  Not  for  your 
side  :  that  I  cannot  wish  you." 


CHAPTER   IV. 

will  it  be  civil  war?* 

October  14  (9.55  p.  m.). 

The  most  conspicuous  feature  of  the 
war  on  this  frontier  has  hitherto  been  its 
absence. 

The  Free  State  forces  about  Bethulie, 
which  is  just  over  the  Free  State  border, 
and  Aliwal  North,  which  is  on  our  side 
of  the  frontier,  make  no  sign  of  an  ad- 
vance. The  reason  for  this  is,  doubtless, 
that  hostilities  here  would  amount  to 
civil  war.  There  is  the  same  mixed 
English  and  Dutch  population  on  each 
side  of  the  Orange  river,  united  by  ties 
of   kinship    and   friendship.      Many   law- 

*  This  chapter  has  been  deliberately  included  in  this  vol- 
ume notwithstanding  its  obviously  fragmentary  nature.  The 
swift  picture  which  it  gives  of  flying  events  is  the  excuse  for 
this  decision. 

31 


32         FROM   CAPETOWN   TO   LADYSMITH. 

abiding  Dutch  burghers  here  have  sons 
and  brothers  who  are  citizens  of  the  Free 
State,  and  therefore  out  with  the  forces. 

In  the  mean  time  the  EngHsh  doctor 
attends  patients  on  the  other  side  of  the 
border,  and  Boer  riflemen  ride  across  to 
buy  goods  at  the  British  stores. 

The  proclamation  published  yesterday 
morning  forbidding  trade  with  the  Re- 
publics is  thus  difificult  and  impolitic  to 
enforce  hereabouts. 

Railway  and  postal  communication  is 
now  stopped,  but  the  last  mail  brought  a 
copy  of  the  Bloemfontein  "  Express," 
with  an  appeal  to  the  Colonial  Boers 
concluding  with  the  words  : — 

"  We  shall  continue  the  war  to  the 
bloody  end.  You  will  assist  us.  Our 
God,  who  has  so  often  helped  us,  will  not 
forsake  us." 

What  effect  this  may  have  is  yet 
doubtful,  but  it  is  certain  that  any  rising 
of  the  Colonial  Dutch  would  send  the 


WILL   IT   BE   CIVIL   WAR?  33 

Colonial    British    into    the  field    in    full 
strength. 

Burghersdorp,  through  which  I  passed 
yesterday,  is  a  village  of  2000  inhabitants, 
and,  as  I  have  already  put  on  record,  the 
centre  of  the  most  disaffected  district  in 
the  colony.  If  there  be  any  Dutch  rising 
in  sympathy  with  the  Free  State  it  will 
begin  here. 

Later. 

And  so  there's  warlike  news  at  last. 

A  Boer  force,  reported  to  be  350 
strong,  shifted  camp  to-day  to  within 
three  miles  of  the  bridge  across  the 
Orange  river.  Well-informed  Dutch  in- 
habitants assert  that  these  are  to  be 
reinforced,  and  will  march  through  Aliwal 
North  to-night  on  their  way  to  attack 
Stormberg  Junction,  sixty  miles  south. 

The  bridge  is  defended  by  two  Cape 
policemen  with  four  others  in  reserve. 

The  loyal  inhabitants  are  boiling  with 
indignation,   declaring   themselves   sacri- 


34    FROM  CAPETOWN  TO  LADYSMITH. 

ficed,  as  usual,  by  the  dilatoriness  of  the 
Government. 

Besides  the  Boer  force  near  here,  there 
is  another,  reported  to  be  450  strong,  at 
Greatheads  Drift,  forty  miles  up  the 
river. 

The  Boers  at  Bethulie,  in  the  Free 
State,  are  believed  to  be  pulling  up  the 
railway  on  their  side  of  the  frontier,  and 
to  be  marching  to  Norvals  Pont,  which 
is  the  ferry  over  the  Orange  river  on  the 
way  to  Colesberg,  with  the  intention  of 
attacking  Naauwpoort  Junction,  on  the 
Capetown-Kimberley  line  ;  but  as  there 
are  no  trains  now  running  to  Bethulie 
it  is  difficult  to  verify  these  reports,  and, 
indeed,  all  reports  must  be  received  with 
caution. 

The  feeling  here  between  the  English 
and  Dutch  extends  to  a  commercial  and 
social  boycott,  and  is  therefore  far  more 
bitter  than  elsewhere.  Several  burghers 
here  have  sent  their  sons  over  the  border, 


WILL   IT   BE   CIVIL   WAR?  35 

and  promise  that  the  loyal  inhabitants 
will  be  "  sjamboked  "  (beaten  with  whips 
of  rhinoceros  hide)  when  the  Boer  force 
passes  through. 

So  far  things  are  quiet.  The  broad, 
sunny,  dusty  streets,  fringed  with  small 
trees  and  lined  with  single-storeyed 
houses,  are  dotted  with  strolling  inhabi- 
tants, both  Dutch  and  natives,  engrossed 
in  their  ordinary  pursuits.  The  whole 
thing  looks  more  like  Arcady  than  revo- 
lution. 

The  only  sign  of  movement  is  that 
eight  young  Boers,  theological  students 
of  the  Dopper  or  strict  Lutheran  college 
here,  left  last  night  for  the  Free  State 
for  active  service. 

The  Boers  across  the  Orange  river  so 
far  make  no  sign  of  raiding.  Many  have 
sent  their  wives  and  families  here  into 
Aliwal  North,  on  our  side  of  the  border, 
in  imitation,  perhaps,  of  President  Steyn, 
whose   wife   at   this  moment   is  staying 


36    FROM  CAPETOWN  TO  LADYSMITH. 

with  her  sister  at  King  William's  Town, 
in  the  Cape  Colony. 

Many  British  farmers,  of  whom  there 
are  a  couple  of  hundred  in  this  district, 
refuse  to  believe  that  the  Free  State  will 
take  the  offensive  on  this  border,  con- 
sidering that  such  aggression  would  be 
impious,  and  that  the  Free  State  will 
restrict  itself  to  defending  its  own 
frontier,  or  the  Transvaal,  if  invaded,  in 
fulfilment  of  the  terms  of  the  offensive 
and  defensive  alliance. 

Nevertheless  there  is,  of  course,  very 
acute  tension  between  the  Dutch  and 
English  here.  No  Boers  are  to  be  seen 
talking  to  Englishmen.  The  Boers  are 
very  close  as  to  their  feelings  and  inten- 
tions, which  those  who  know  them  inter- 
pret as  a  bad  sign,  because,  as  a  rule, 
they  are  inclined  to  irresponsible  gar- 
rulity. A  point  in  which  Dutch  feeling 
here  tells  is  that  every  Dutch  man, 
woman,  or  child  is  more  or  less  of  a  Boer 


WILL   IT   BE  CIVIL  WAR?  37 

secret  service  agent,  revealing  our  move- 
ments and  concealing  those  of  the  Boers. 

If  there  be  any  rising  it  may  be 
expected  by  November  9,  when  the 
Boers  hold  their  "  wappenschouwing,"  or 
rifle  contest — the  local  Bisley,  in  fact — 
which  every  man  for  miles  around 
attends  armed.  Also  the  Afrikander 
Bond  Congress  is  to  be  held  next  month  ; 
but  probably  the  leaders  will  do  their 
best  to  keep  the  people  together. 

The  Transvaal  agents  are  naturally 
doing  their  utmost  to  provoke  rebellion. 
A  lieutenant  of  their  police  is  known  to 
be  hiding  hereabouts,  and  a  warrant  is 
out  for  his  arrest.  All  depends,  say  the 
experts,  on  the  results  of  the  first  few 
weeks  of  fighting. 

The  attitude  of  the  natives  causes  some 
uneasiness.  Every  Basuto  employed  on 
the  line  here  has  returned  to  his  tribe, 
one  saying :  "  Be  sure  we  shall  not  harm 
our  mother  the  Oueen." 


\^i 


38  FROM    CAPETOWN   TO   LADYSMITH. 

Many  Transkei  Kaffirs  also  have 
passed  through  here  owing  to  the  closing 
of  the  mines.  Sixty-six  crammed  truck- 
loads  of  them  came  by  one  train.  They 
had  been  treated  with  great  brutality  by 
the  Boers,  having  been  flogged  to  the 
station  and  robbed  of  their  wages. 


CHAPTER  V. 

LOYAL    ALIWAL  :    A    TRAGI-COMEDY. 

Aliwal  North,  September  15. 

"Halt!  Who  goes  there?"  The  trim 
figure,  black  in  the  moonlight,  in 
breeches  and  putties,  with  a  broad- 
brimmed  hat  looped  up  at  the  side, 
brought  up  his  carbine  and  barred  the 
entrance  to  the  bridge.  Twenty  yards 
beyond  a  second  trim  black  figure  with  a 
carbine  stamped  to  and  fro  over  the 
planking.  They  were  of  the  Cape 
Police,  and  there  were  four  more  of  them 
somewhere  in  reserve ;  across  the  bridge 
was  the  Orange  Free  State ;  behind  us 
was  the  little  frontier  town  of  Aliwal 
North,  and  these  were  its  sole  garrison. 

The  river  shone  silver  under  its  high 
39 


40         FROM   CAPETOWN  TO   LADYSMITH. 

banks.  Beyond  it,  in  the  enemy's  coun- 
try, the  veldt  too  was  silvered  over  with 
moonlight  and  was  blotted  inkily  with 
shadow  from  the  kopjes.  Three  miles  to 
the  right,  over  a  rise  and  down  in  a  dip, 
they  said  there  lay  the  Rouxville  com- 
mando of  350  men.  That  night  they 
were  to  receive  700  or  800  more  from 
Smithfield,  and  thereon  would  ride 
through  Aliwal  on  their  way  to  eat  up 
the  British  half-battalion  at  Stormberg. 
On  our  side  of  the  bridge  slouched  a 
score  of  Boers — waiting,  they  said,  to 
join  and  conduct  their  kinsmen.  In  the 
very  middle  of  these  twirled  a  battered 
merry-go-round  —  an  island  of  garish 
naphtha  light  in  the  silver,  a  jarr  of 
wheeze  and  squeak  in  the  swishing  of 
trees  and  river.  Up  the  hill,  through 
the  town,  in  the  bar  of  the  ultra-English 
hotel,  proceeded  this  dialogue. 

A  fat  man    {thunderously,  nursing  a 
Lee-Metford     sporting     rifle).       Well, 


LOYAL  ALIWAL:    A   TRAGI-COMEDY.        4I 

you've  yourselves  to  blame.  I've  done 
my  best.  With  fifty  men  I'd  have  held 
this  place  against  a  thousand  Boers,  and 
not  ten  men  'd  join. 

A  thin- faced  77ian  {^  piping).  We 
haven't  got  the  rifles.  Every  Dutch- 
man's armed,  and  how  many  rifles  will 
you  find  among  the  English  ? 

Fat  mail  {shooting  home  bolt  of  Lee- 
Metford).  And  who's  fault's  that  ?  I've 
left  my  property  in  the  Free  State,  and 
odds  are  I  shall  lose  every  penny  I've 
got — what  part  ?  all  over — and  come 
here  on  to  British  soil,  and  what  do  I 
find?  With  fifty  men  I'd  hold  this 
place 

Thinfaced  man.  They'll  be  here  to- 
night, old  De  Wet  says,  and  they're  to 
come  here  and  sjambok  the  Englishmen 
who've  been  talking  too  much.  That's 
what  comes  of  being  loyal ! 

Fat  man.     Loyal!    With  fifty  men 

Brown-faced,  grey-haired  man  {smoking 


42  FROM    CAPETOWN   TO    LADYSMITH. 

deep-bowled  pipe    in    corner).      No,  you 
wouldn't. 

Fat  man  (^playing  with  sights  of 
Lee- Met  ford).  What!  Not  keep  the 
bridge  with  fifty  men 

Brown-faced,  grey-haired  man.  And 
they'd  cross  by  the  old  drift,  and  be  on 
every  side  of  you  in  ten  minutes. 

Fat  m,an  (^grounding  Lee-Metford). 
Ah  !     Well— h'm  ! 

Thick-set  man.  But  we're  safe 
enough.  Has  not  the  Government  sent 
us  a  garrison  ?  Six  policemen  !  Six 
policemen,  gentlemen,  and  the  Boers  are 
at  Pieter's  farrm,  and  they'll  be  here  to- 
night and  sjambok 

Thin-faced  man.  Where  are  the 
troops  ?  Where  are  the  volunteers  ? 
Where  are  the 

Brown-faced,  grey-haired  man.  There 
are  no  troops,  and  the  better  for  you. 
The  strength  of  Aliwal  is  in  its  weakness. 
(^To fat  man.)     Put  that  gun  away. 


LOYAL  ALIWAL:   A   TRAGI-COMEDY.         43 

Thin-faced  man,  thickset  7nan,  and 
general  chorus.     Yes,  put  it  away. 

Thin-faced  mart.  But  I  want  to  know 
why  the  Boers  are  armed  and  we  aren't  ? 
Why  does  our  Government 

Brownfaced  man.  Are  you  accus- 
tomed to  shoot  ? 

Thin-faced  man  (^faintly).     No. 

Fat  man  (rettcrning  from  putting 
away  Lee-Metford^.  But  where  do  you 
come  from  ? 

Brown-faced  man.  Free  State,  same 
as  you  do.  Lived  there  five-and-twenty 
years. 

Thin-faced  man.  Any  trouble  in  get- 
ing  away  ? 

Brown-faced  man.  No.  Field-cornet 
was  a  good  old  fellow  and  an  old  friend 
of  mine,  and  he  gave  me  the  hint 

Thin-faced  man.  Not  much  like  ours  ! 
Why,  there's  a  lady  staying  here  that's 
friendly  with  his  daughters,  and  she  went 
out  to  see  them  the  other  day,  and  the 


44    FROM  CAPETOWN  TO  LADYSMITH. 

old  man  said  they'd  stop  here  and 
sjam 

Fat  man.  Gentlemen,  drinks  all 
round !  Here's  success  to  the  British 
arms  ! 

All.     Success  to  the  British  arms  ! 

Thick-set  man.  And  may  the  British 
Government  not  desert  us  again  ! 

Fat  ma?i.  I'll  take  a  shade  of  odds 
about  it.  They  will.  I've  no  trust  in 
Chamberlain.  It  '11  be  just  the  same  as 
it  was  in  '8 1.  A  few  reverses  and  you'll 
find  they'll  begin  to  talk  about  terms.  I 
know  them.  Every  loyal  man  in  South 
Africa  knows  them.  (^General  murmur 
of  assent.) 

Hotel-keeper.  Gentlemen,  drinks  all 
round  !  Here's  success  to  the  British 
arms  ! 

All.  Success  to  the  British  arms  ! 

Thick-set  man.  And  where  are  the 
British  arms  ?  Where's  the  Army  Corps  ? 
Has   a   man    of   that    Army   Corps   left 


LOYAL  ALIWAL:   A   TRAGI-COMEDY.        45 

England  ?  Shilly-shally,  as  usual.  South 
Africa's  no  place  for  an  Englishman 
to  live  in.  Armoured  train  blown  up, 
Mafeking  cut  off,  Kimberley  in  danger, 
and  General  Butler — what?  Oh,  yes — 
General  Duller  leaves  England  to-day. 
Why  didna  they  send  the  Army  Corps 
out  three  months  ago? 

Brown-faced  man.  It's  six  thousand 
miles 

Thick-set  man.  Why  didna  they  send 
them  just  after  the  Bloemfontein  confer- 
ence, before  the  Boers  were  ready  ? 
British  Gov 

Brown-faced  man.  They've  had  three 
rifles  a  man  with  ammunition  since 
1896. 

/  {timidly).  Well,  then,  if  the  Army 
Corps  had  left  three  months  ago,  wouldn't 
the  Boers  have  declared  war  three  months 
ago  too  ? 

All  except  brownfaced  man  (Jojidly). 
No! 


46         FROM   CAPETOWN  TO   LADYSMITH. 

Brown-faced  man  {^quietly).  Yes.  Gen- 
tlemen, bedtime  !  As  Brand  used  to  say, 
"  Al  zal  rijt  komen  !  " 

All  (^fervently).  Al  zal  rijt  komen  ! 
Success  to  the  British  arms !  Good- 
night ! 

(All  go  to  bed.  In  the  night  somebody 
on  the  Boer  side — or  elsewhere — goes 
out  shooting,  or  looses  off  his  rifle  on 
general  grounds ;  two  loyalists  and  a 
refugee  spring  up  and  grasp  their  revol- 
vers. In  the  morning  everybody  wakes  up 
unsjamboked.  The  hotel-keeper  takes  me 
out  to  numerous  points  whence  Pieter's 
farm  can  be  reconnoitred ;  there  is  not  a 
single  tent  to  be  seen,  and  no  sign  of  a 
single  Boer.) 

It  is  a  shame  to  smile  at  them.  They 
are  really  very,  very  loyal,  and  they  are 
excellent  fellows  and  most  desirable  col- 
onists. Aliwal  is  a  nest  of  green  on  the 
yellow  veldt,  speckless,  well-furnished, 
with  Marechal  Neil  roses  growing  over 


LOYAL  ALIWAL  :   A   TRAGI-COMEDY.        47 

trellises,  and  a  scheme  to  dam  the  Orange 
river  for  water  supply,  and  electric  light. 
They  were  quite  unprotected,  and  their 
position  was  certainly  humiliating. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

THE    BATTLE    OF    ELANDSLAAGTE. 

Ladysmith,  October  22. 

From  a  billow  of  the  rolling  veldt  we 
looked  back,  and  black  columns  were 
coming  up  behind  us. 

Along  the  road  from  Ladysmith  moved 
cavalry  and  guns.  Along  the  railway 
line  to  right  of  it  crept  trains — one,  two, 
three  of  them — packed  with  khaki,  bris- 
tling with  the  rifles  of  infantry.  We  knew 
then  that  we  should  fight  before  nightfall. 

Major-General  French,  who  command- 
ed, had  been  out  from  before  daybreak 
with  the  Imperial  Light  Horse,  and  the 
battery  of  the  Natal  Volunteer  Artillery 
reconnoitring  towards  Elandslaagte.  The 
armoured  train — slate-colour  plated  en- 
gine, a  slate-colour  plated  loop-holded 
48 


r 


MAP  OF  THE  SEAT  OF  WAR  IN  SOUTH  AFRICA, 


3 


r 


THE   BATTLE   OF   ELANDSLAAGTE.  49 

cattle-truck  before  and  behind,  an  open 
truck  with  a  Maxim  at  the  tail  of  all — 
puffed  along  on  his  right.  Elandslaagte 
is  a  little  village  and  railway  station 
seventeen  miles  northeast  of  Ladysmith, 
where  two  days  before  the  Boers  had 
blown  up  a  culvert  and  captured  a  train. 
That  cut  our  direct  communication  with 
the  force  at  Dundee.  Moreover,  it  was 
known  that  the  Free  State  commandoes 
were  massing  to  the  northwest  of  Lady- 
smith  and  the  Transvaalers  to  attack 
Dundee  again.  On  all  grounds  it  was 
desirable  to  smash  the  Elandslaagte  lot 
while  they  were  still  weak  and  alone. 

The  reconnaissance  stole  forward  until 
it  came  in  sight  of  the  little  blue-roofed 
village  and  the  little  red  tree-girt  station. 
It  was  occupied.  The  Natal  battery  un- 
limbered  and  opened  fire.  A  round  or 
two — and  then  suddenly  came  a  flash 
from  a  kopje  two  thousand  yards  beyond 
the  station  on  the  right.    The  Boer  guns! 


50         FROM   CAPETOWN   TO    LADYSMITH. 

And  the  next  thing  was  the  hissing  shriek 
of  a  shell — and  plump  it  dropped,  just 
under  one  of  the  Natal  limbers.  By  luck  it 
did  not  burst ;  but  if  the  Boer  ammunition 
contractor  was  suspect,  it  was  plain  that 
the  Boer  artillerist  could  lay  a  gun. 
Plump  :  plump  :  they  came  right  into  the 
battery  ;  down  went  a  horse ;  over  went 
an  ammunition-wagon.  At  that  range  the 
Volunteers'  little  old  7-pounders  were 
pea-shooters ;  you  might  as  well  have 
spat  at  the  enemy.  The  guns  limbered 
up  and  were  off.  Next  came  the  vicious 
phutt  !  of  a  bursting  shell  not  fifty  yards 
from  the  armoured  train — and  the  arm- 
oured train  was  puffing  back  for  its  life. 
Everybody  went  back  half-a-dozen  miles 
on  the  Ladysmith  road  to  Modder  Spruit 
Station. 

The  men  on  reconnaissance  duty 
retired,  as  is  their  business.  They  had 
discovered  that  the  enemy  had  guns  and 
meant  fighting.     Lest  he  should  follow, 


THE   BATTLE   OF   ELANDSLAAGTE.  5 1 

they  sent  out  from  Ladysmith,  about 
nine  in  the  morning,  half  a  battalion 
apiece  of  the  Devonshire  and  Manchester 
Regiments  by  train,  and  the  42d  Field 
Battery,  with  a  squadron  of  the  5th 
Dragoon  Guards  by  road.  They 
arrived,  and  there  fell  on  us  the  common 
lot  of  reconnaissances.  We  dismounted, 
loosened  girths,  ate  tinned  meat,  and 
wondered  what  we  should  do  next.  We 
were  on  a  billow  of  veldt  that  heaved 
across  the  valley ;  up  it  ran,  road  and 
rail  ;  on  the  left  rose  tiers  of  hills,  in 
front  a  huge  green  hill  blocked  our  view, 
with  a  tangle  of  other  hills  crowding 
behind  to  peep  over  its  shoulders.  On 
the  right,  across  the  line,  were  meadows  ; 
up  from  them  rose  a  wall  of  red-brown 
kopje  ;  up  over  that  a  wall  of  grass-green 
veldt ;  over  that  was  the  enemy.  We 
ate  and  sat  and  wondered  what  we 
should  do  'next.  Presently  we  saw  the 
troopers  mounting  and  the  trains  getting 


52         FROM   CAPETOWN   TO   LADYSMITH. 

up  steam ;  we  mounted ;  and  scouts, 
advance-guard,  flanking  patrols — every- 
body crept  slowly,  slowly,  cautiously  for- 
ward. Then,  about  half-past  two,  we 
turned  and  beheld  the  columns  coming 
up  behind  us.  The  21st  Field  Battery, 
the  5th  Lancers,  the  Natal  Mounted 
Volunteers  on  the  road ;  the  other  half  of 
the  Devons  and  half  the  Gordon  High- 
landers on  the  trains — total,  with  what 
we  had,  say  something  short  of  3000  men 
and  eighteen  guns.     It  was  battle  ! 

The  trains  drew  up  and  vomited  khaki 
into  the  meadow.  The  mass  separated 
and  ordered  itself.  A  line  of  little  dots 
began  to  draw  across  it ;  a  thicker  line  of 
dots  followed  ;  a  continuous  line  followed 
them,  then  other  lines,  then  a  mass  of 
khaki  topping  a  dark  foundation — the 
kilts  of  the  Highlanders.  From  our  bil- 
low we  could  not  see  them  move  ;  but 
the  green  on  the  side  of  the  line  grew 
broader,  and  the  green  between  them  and 


THE   BATTLE   OF   ELANDSLAAGTE.  53 

the  kopje  grew  narrower.  Now  the  first 
dots  were  at  the  base — now  hardly  dis- 
cernible on  the  brown  hill  flanks. 
Presently  the  second  line  of  dots  was  at 
the  base.  Then  the  third  line  and  the 
second  was  lost  on  the  brown,  and  the 
third — where  ?  There,  bold  on  the  sky- 
line. Away  on  their  right,  round  the 
hill,  stole  the  black  column  of  the 
Imperial  Light  Horse.  The  hill  was 
crowned,  was    turned — but   where    were 

the  Bo 

A  hop,  a  splutter,  a  rattle,  and  then  a 
snarling  roll  of  musketry  broke  on  the 
question  ;  not  from  the  hill,  but  far  on 
our  left  front,  where  the  Dragoon  Guards 
were  scouting.  On  that  the  thunder  of 
galloping  orderlies  and  hoarse  yells  of 
command — advance  ! — in  line  ! — waggon 
supply ! — and  with  rattle  and  thunder  the 
batteries  tore  past,  wheeled,  unlimbered 
as  if  they  broke  in  halves.  Then  rattled 
and  thundered  the  waggons,  men  gath- 


54         FROM   CAPETOWN  TO   LADYSMITH. 

ered  round  the  guns  like  the  groups 
round  a  patient  in  an  operation.  And 
the  first  gun  barked  death.  And  then 
after  all  it  was  a  false  alarm.  At  the  first 
shell  you  could  see  through  glasses 
mounted  men  scurrying  up  the  slopes  of 
the  big  opposite  hill  ;  by  the  third  they 
were  gone.  And  then,  as  our  guns  still 
thudded — thud  came  the  answer.  Only 
where  ?  Away,  away  on  the  right,  from 
the  green  kopje  over  the  brown  one 
where  still  struggled  the  reserves  of  our 
infantry. 

Limbers  !  From  halves  the  guns  were 
whole  again,  and  wheeled  away  over 
plough-land  to  the  railway.  Down  went 
a  length  of  wire-fencing,  and  gun  after 
gun  leaped  ringing  over  the  metals,  scor- 
ing the  soft  pasture  beyond.  We  passed 
round  the  leftward  edge  of  the  brown 
hill  and  joined  our  infantry  in  a  broad 
green  valley.  The  head  of  it  was  the 
second  skyline  we  had  seen  ;  beyond  was 


THE  BATTLE   OF  ELANDSLAAGTE.  55 

a  dip,  a  swell  of  kopje,  a  deep  valley,  and 
beyond  that  a  small  sugar-loaf  kopje  to 
the  left  and  a  long  hog-backed  one  on  the 
right — a  saw  of  small  ridges  above,  a 
harsh  face  below,  freckled  with  innumer- 
able boulders.  Below  the  small  kopje 
were  tents  and  waggons  ;  from  the  left- 
ward shoulder  of  the  big  one  flashed 
once  more  the  Boer  guns. 

This  time  the  shell  came.  Faint  whirr 
waxed  presently  to  furious  scream,  and 
the  white  cloud  flung  itself  on  to  the  very 
line  of  our  batteries  unlimbering  on  the 
brow.  Whirr  and  scream  —  another 
dashed  itself  into  the  field  between  the 
guns  and  limbers.  Another  and  another, 
only  now  they  fell  harmlessly  behind  the 
guns,  seeking  vainly  for  the  waggons 
and  teams  which  were  drawn  snugly 
away  under  a  hillside  on  the  right.  An- 
other and  another — bursting  now  on  the 
clear  space  in  rear  of  the  guns  between 
our  right  and  left  infantry  columns.     All 


56         FROM   CAPETOWN  TO    LADYSMITH. 

the  infantry  were  lying  down,  so  well 
folded  in  the  ground  that  I  could  only 
see  the  Devons  on  the  left.  The  Man- 
chesters  and  Gordons  on  the  right 
seemed  to  be  swallowed  by  the  veldt. 

Then  between  the  bangs  of  their  artil- 
lery struck  the  hoarser  bay  of  our  own. 
Ball  after  ball  of  white  smoke  alighted 
on  the  kopje — the  first  at  the  base,  the 
second  over,  the  third  jump  on  the  Boer 
gun.  By  the  fourth  the  Boer  gun  flashed 
no  more.  Then  our  guns  sent  forth 
little  white  balloons  of  shrapnel,  to  right, 
to  left,  higher,  lower,  peppering  the 
whole  face.  Now  came  rifle  fire — a  few 
reports,  and  then  a  roll  like  the  un- 
greased  wheels  of  a  farm  cart.  The  Im- 
perial Light  Horse  was  at  work  on  the 
extreme  riorht.  And  now  as  the  Qruns 
pealed  faster  and  faster  we  saw  mounted 
men  riding  up  the  nearer  swell  of  kopje 
and  diving  over  the  edge.  Shrapnel  fol- 
lowed ;  some  dived  and  came  up  no  more. 


THE   BATTLE   OF    ELANDSLAAGTE.  5/ 

The  guns  limbered  up  and  moved 
across  to  a  nearer  position  towards  the 
right.  As  they  moved  the  Boer  gun 
opened  again — Lord,  but  the  German 
gunners  knew  their  business ! — punctu- 
ating the  intervals  and  distances  of  the 
pieces  with  scattering  destruction.  The 
third  or  fourth  shell  pitched  clean  into  a 
labouring  waggon  with  its  double  team 
of  eight  horses.  It  was  full  of  shells. 
We  held  our  breath  for  an  explosion. 
But,  when  the  smoke  cleared,  only  the 
near  wheeler  was  on  his  side,  and  the 
waggon  had  a  wheel  in  the  air.  The 
batteries  unlimbered  and  bayed  again, 
and  again  the  Boer  guns  were  silent. 
Now  for  the  attack. 

The  attack  was  to  be  made  on  their 
front  and  their  left  flank — along  the  hog- 
back of  the  big  kopje.  The  Devons  on 
our  left  formed  for  the  front  attack ;  the 
Manchesters  went  on  the  right,  the  Gor- 
dons edged  out  to  the  extreme  rightward 


58         FROM   CAPETOWN   TO    LADYSMITH. 

base,  with  the  long,  long  boulder-freckled 
face  above  them.  The  guns  flung  shrap- 
nel across  the  valley ;  the  watchful  cav- 
alry were  in  leash,  straining  towards  the 
enemy's  flanks.  It  was  about  a  quarter 
to  five,  and  it  .seemed  curiously  dark  for 
the  time  of  day. 

No  wonder — for  as  the  men  moved 
forward  before  the  enemy  the  heavens 
were  opened.  From  the  eastern  sky 
swept  a  sheer  sheet  of  rain.  With  the 
first  stabbing  drops  horses  turned  their 
heads  away,  trembling,  and  no  whip  or 
spur  could  bring  them  up  to  it.  It  drove 
through  mackintoshes  as  if  they  were 
blotting  paper.  The  air  was  filled  with 
hissing ;  underfoot  you  could  see  solid 
earth  melting  into  mud,  and  mud  flowing 
away  in  water.  It  blotted  out  hill  and 
dale  and  enemy  in  one  grey  curtain  of 
swooping  water.  You  would  have  said 
that  the  heavens  had  opened  to  drown 
the  wrath  of  man.     And  through  it  the 


THE   BATTLE   OF  ELANDSLAAGTE.  59 

guns   Still  thundered  and  the  khaki  col- 
umns pushed  doggedly  on. 

The  infantry  came  among  the  boulders 
and  began  to  open  out.  The  supports 
and  reserves  followed  up.  And  then,  in 
a  twinkling,  on  the  stone-pitted  hill-face 
burst  loose  that  other  storm — the  storm 
of  lead,  of  blood,  of  death.  In  a  twin- 
kling the  first  line  were  down  behind 
rocks  firing  fast,  and  the  bullets  came 
flicking  round  them.  Men  stopped  and 
started,  staggered  and  dropped  limply  as 
if  the  string  were  cut  that  held  them 
upright.  The  line  pushed  on  ;  the  sup- 
ports and  reserves  followed  up.  A 
colonel  fell,  shot  in  the  arm ;  the  regi- 
ment pushed  on. 

They  came  to  a  rocky  ridge  about 
twenty  feet  high.  They  clung  to  cover, 
firing,  then  rose,  and  were  among  the 
shrill  bullets  again.  A  major  was  left  at 
the  bottom  of  that  ridge,  with  his  pipe  in 
his  mouth  and  a  Mauser  bullet  through 


6o         FROM   CAPETOWN   TO    LADYSMITH. 

his  leg;  his  company  pushed  on.  Down 
again,  fire  again,  up  again,  and  on ! 
Another  ridge  won  and  passed — and  only 
a  more  hellish  hail  of  bullets  beyond  it. 
More  men  down,  more  men  pushed  into 
the  firing  line — more  death-piping  bullets 
than  ever.  The  air  was  a  sieve  of  them  ; 
they  beat  on  the  boulders  like  a  million 
hammers ;  they  tore  the  turf  like  a 
harrow. 

Another  ridge  crowned,  another 
welcoming,  whistling  gust  of  perdition, 
more  men  down,  more  pushed  into  the 
firing  line.  Half  the  officers  were  down  ; 
the  men  puffed  and  stumbled  on. 
Another  ridge  —  God !  Would  this 
cursed  hill  never  end  ?  It  was  sown  with 
bleeding  and  dead  behind ;  it  was  edged 
with  stinging  fire  before.  God  !  Would 
it  never  end  ?  On,  and  get  to  the  end  of 
it !  And  now  it  was  surely  the  end. 
The   merry  bugles  rang  out   like   cock- 


THE  BATTLE   OF   ELANDSLAAGTE.  6l 

crow  on  a  fine  morning.  The  pipes 
shrieked  of  blood  and  the  lust  of  glorious 
death.  Fix  bayonets !  Staff  officers 
rushed  shouting  from  the  rear,  implor- 
ing, cajoling,  cursing,  slamming  every 
man  who  could  move  into  the  line. 
Line — but  it  was  a  line  no  longer.  It 
was  a  surging  wave  of  men — Devons 
and  Gordons,  Manchester  and  Light 
Horse  all  mixed,  inextricably  ;  subalterns 
commanding  regiments,  soldiers  yelling 
advice,  officers  firing  carbines,  stumbling, 
leaping,  killing,  falling,  all  drunk  with 
battle,  shoving  through  hell  to  the  throat 
of  the  enemy.  And  there  beneath  our 
feet  was  the  Boer  camp  and  the  last 
Boers  galloping  out  of  it.  There  also — 
thank  Heaven,  thank  Heaven ! — were 
squadrons  of  Lancers  and  Dragoon 
Guards  storming  in  among  them,  shout- 
ing, spearing,  stamping  them  into  the 
ground.     Cease  fire ! 


62         FROM   CAPETOWN  TO   LADYSMITH. 

It  was  over — twelve  hours  of  march,  of 
reconnaissance,  of  waiting,  of  preparation, 
and  half  an  hour  of  attack.  But  half  an 
hour  crammed  with  the  life  of  half  a  life- 
time. 


CHAPTER  VII. 

THE    BIVOUAC. 

Ladysmith,  October  23. 

Pursuing  cavalry  and  pursued  enemy 
faded  out  of  our  sight ;  abruptly  we  real- 
ised that  it  was  night.  A  mob  of  unas- 
sorted soldiers  stood  on  the  rock-sown, 
man-sown  hillside,  victorious  and  helpless. 

Out  of  every  quarter  of  the  blackness 
leaped  rough  voices.  "  G  Company  ! " 
"  Devons  here!"  "Imperial  Light 
Horse?"  "  Over  here  !  "  "Over  where?" 
Then  a  trip  and  a  heavy  stumble  and  an 
oath.  "  Doctor  wanted  'ere  !  'Elp  for  a 
wounded  orficer  !  Damn  you,  there  !  who 
are  you  fallin'  up  against  ?  This  is  the 
Gordon  'Ighlanders — what's  left  of  'em." 

Here  and  there  an  inkier  blackness 
63 


64    FROM  CAPETOWN  TO  LADYSMITH. 

moving  showed  a  unit  that  had  begun  to 
find  itself  again. 

But  for  half  an  hour  the  hillside  was 
still  a  maze — a  maze  of  bodies  of  men 
wandering  they  knew  not  whither,  cross- 
ing and  recrossing,  circling,  stopping  and 
returning  on  their  stumbles,  slipping  on 
smooth  rock-faces,  breaking  shins  on 
rough  boulders,  treading  with  hob-nailed 
boots  on  wounded  fingers. 

At  length  underfoot  twinkled  lights, 
and  a  strong,  clear  voice  sailed  into  the 
confusion,  "  All  wounded  men  are  to  be 
brought  down  to  the  Boer  camp  between 
the  two  hills."  Towards  the  lights  and 
the  Boer  camp  we  turned  down  the 
face  of  jumbled  stumbling-block.  A 
wary  kick  forward,  a  feel  below — firm 
rock.  Stop — and  the  firm  rock  spun  and 
the  leg  shot  into  an  ankle-wrenching  hole. 
Scramble  out  and  feel  again  ;  here  is  a 
flat  face — forward !  And  then  a  tug 
that  jerks  you  on  to  your  back  again  : 


THE   BIVOUAC.  65 

you  forgot  you  had  a  horse  to  lead,  and 
he  does  not  like  the  look  of  this  bit. 
Climb  back  again  and  take  him  by  the 
head ;  still  he  will  not  budge.  Try 
again  to  the  right.  Bang !  goes  your 
knee  into  a  boulder.  Circle  cannily 
round  the  horse  to  the  left ;  here  at  last 
is  something  like  a  slope.  Forward 
horse  —  so,  gently !  Hurrah  !  Two 
minutes   gone — a   yard    descended. 

By  the  time  we  stumbled  down  that 
precipice  there  had  already  passed  a 
week  of  nights — and  it  was  not  yet  eight 
o'clock.  At  the  bottom  were  half-a- 
dozen  tents,  a  couple  of  lanterns,  and  a 
dozen  waggons — huge,  heavy  veldt-ships 
lumbered  up  with  cargo.  It  was  at  least 
possible  to  tie  a  horse  up  and  turn  round 
in  the  sliding  mud  to  see  what  next. 

What  next  ?  Little  enough  question 
of  that !  Off  the  break-neck  hillside 
still  dropped  hoarse  importunate  cries. 
"  Wounded  man  here  !     Doctor  wanted  ! 


66         FROM   CAPETOWN   TO    LADYSMITH. 

Three  of  'em  here !  A  stretcher,  for 
God's  sake!"  "A  stretcher  there!  Is 
there  no  stretcher  ? "  There  was  not 
one  stretcher  within  voice-shot. 

Already  the  men  were  bringing  down 
the  first  of  their  wounded.  Slung  in  a 
blanket  came  a  captain,  his  wet  hair 
matted  over  his  forehead,  brow  and  teeth 
set,  lips  twitching  as  they  put  him  down, 
gripping  his  whole  soul  to  keep  it  from 
crying  out.  He  turned  with  the  begin- 
ning of  a  smile  that  would  not  finish  : 
"  Would  you  mind  straightening  out  my 
arm?"  The  arm  was  bandaged  above 
the  elbow,  and  the  forearm  was  hooked 
under  him.  A  man  bent  over — and  sud- 
denly it  was  dark.  "  Here,  bring  back 
that  lantern ! "  But  the  lantern  was 
staggering  uphill  again  to  fetch  the 
next.  "  Oh,  do  straighten  out  my  arm," 
wailed  the  voice  from  the  ground. 
"  And  cover  me  up.  I'm  perishing  with 
cold."     "  Here's  matches  !  "     "  And  'ere ; 


THE   BIVOUAC.  dj 

I've  got  a  bit  of  candle."  '*  Where  ?  " 
"  Oh,  do  straighten  out  my  arm  ! " 
'"Ere,  'old  out  your  'and."  "Got  it," 
and  the  light  flickered  up  again  round 
the  broken  figure,  and  the  arm  was  laid 
straiofht.  As  the  touch  came  on  to  the 
clammy  fingers  it  met  something  wet 
and  red,  and  the  prone  body  quivered  all 
over.  "  What,"  said  the  weak  voice — 
the  smile  struggled  to  come  out  again, 
but  dropped  back  even  sooner  than  be- 
fore— "  have  they  got  my  finger  too  ?  " 
Then  they  covered  up  the  body  with  a 
blanket,  wringing  wet,  and  left  it  to  soak 
and  shiver.  And  that  was  one  out  of 
more  than  two  hundred. 

For  hours — and  by  now  it  was  a  month 
of  nights — every  man  with  hands  and 
legs  toiled  up  and  down,  up  and  down, 
that  ladder  of  pain.  By  Heaven's  grace 
the^  Boers  had  filled  their  waggons  with 
the  loot  of  many  stores ;  there  were 
blankets  to  carry  men  in  and  mattresses 


68    FROM  CAPETOWN  TO  LADYSMITH. 

whereon  to  lay  them.  They  came  down 
with  sprawling  bearers,  with  jolts  and 
groans,  with  "  Oh,  put  me  down  ;  I  can't 
stand  it !  I'm  done  anyhow  ;  let  me  die 
quiet."  And  always  would  come  back 
the  cheery  voice  from  doctor  or  officer 
or  pal.  "  Done,  colour-sergeant !  Non- 
sense, man !  Why,  you'll  be  back  to 
duty  in  a  fortnight."  And  the  answer 
was  another  choked  groan. 

Hour  by  hour — would  day  never 
break  ?  Not  yet ;  it  was  just  twenty 
minutes  to  ten — man  by  man  they 
brought  them  down.  The  tent  was  car- 
peted  now  with  limp  bodies.  With 
breaking  backs  they  heaved  some  shoul- 
der high  into  waggons  ;  others  they  laid 
on  mattresses  on  the  ground.  In  the 
rain-blurred  light  of  the  lantern — could  it 
not  cease,  that  piercing  drizzle  to-night  of 
all  niofhts  at  least — the  doctor,  the  one 
doctor,  toiled  buoyantly  on.  Cutting  up 
their  clothes  with  scissors,  feeling  with 


THE   BIVOUAC.  69 

light  firm  fingers  over  torn  chest  or 
thigh,  cunningly  slipping  round  the  band- 
age, tenderly  covering  up  the  crimson 
ruin  of  strong  men — hour  by  hour,  man 
by  man,  he  toiled  on. 

And  mark — and  remember  for  the  rest 
of  your  lives — that  Tommy  Atkins  made 
no  distinction  between  the  wounded 
enemy  and  his  dearest  friend.  To  the 
men  who  in  the  afternoon  were  lying 
down  behind  rocks  with  rifles  pointed  to 
kill  him,  who  had  shot,  may  be,  the  com- 
rade of  his  heart,  he  gave  the  last  drop  of 
his  water,  the  last  drop  of  his  melting 
strength,  the  last  drop  of  comfort  he 
could  wring  out  of  his  scared,  gallant 
soul.  In  war,  they  say — and  it  is  true — 
men  grow  callous  ;  an  afternoon  of 
shooting  and  the  loss  of  your  brother 
hurts  you  less  than  a  week  before  did  a 
thorn  in  your  dog's  foot.  But  it  is  only 
compassion  for  the  dead  that  dries  up  ; 
and   as    it   dries,    the    spring    wells    up 


70         FROM    CAPETOWN   TO    LADYSMITH. 

among  good  men  of  sympathy  with  all 
the  livinof-  A  few  men  had  made  a  fire 
in  the  gnawing  damp  and  cold,  and  round 
it  they  sat,  even  the  unwounded  Boer 
prisoners.  For  themselves  they  took  the 
outer  ring,  and  not  a  word  did  any  man 
say  that  could  mortify  the  wound  of 
defeat.  In  the  afternoon  Tommy  was  a 
hero,  in  the  evening  he  was  a  gentleman. 
Do  not  forget,  either,  the  doctors  of 
the  enemy.  We  found  their  wounded 
with  our  own,  and  it  was  pardonable  to 
be  glad  that  whereas  our  men  set  their 
teeth  in  silence,  some  of  theirs  wept  and 
groaned.  Not  all,  though :  we  found 
Mr.  Kok,  father  of  the  Boer  general  and 
member  of  the  Transvaal  Executive, 
lying  high  up  on  the  hill — a  massive, 
white-bearded  patriarch,  in  a  black  frock- 
coat  and  trousers.  With  simple  dignity, 
with  the  right  of  a  dying  man  to  com- 
mand, he  said  in  his  strong  voice,  "  Take 
me  down  the  hill  and  lay  me  in  a  tent ;  I 


THE   BIVOUAC.  7 1 

am  wounded  by  three  bullets."  It  was  a 
bad  day  for  the  Kok  family  :  four  were 
on  the  field,  and  all  were  hit.  They 
found  Commandant  Schiel,  too,  the  Ger- 
man free-lance,  lying  with  a  bullet  through 
his  thigh,  near  the  two  guns  which  he  had 
served  so  well,  and  which  no  German  or 
Dutchman  would  ever  serve  again.  Then 
there  were  three  field-cornets  out  of  four, 
members  of  Volksraad,  two  public  prose- 
cutors— Heaven  only  knows  whom  !  But 
their  own  doctors  were  among  them  al- 
most as  soon  as  were  ours. 

Under  the  Red  Cross  —  under  the 
black  sky,  too,  and  the  drizzle,  and  the 
creeping  cold — we  stood  and  kicked 
numbed  feet  in  the  mud,  and  talked  to- 
gether of  the  fight,  A  prisoner  or  two, 
allowed  out  to  look  for  wounded,  came 
and  joined  in.  We  were  all  most 
friendly,  and  naturally  congratulated  each 
other  on  havina-  done  so  well.  These 
Boers   were  neither  sullen  nor  complai- 


^2         FROM  CAPETOWN  TO  LADYSMITH. 

sant.  They  had  fought  their  best,  and 
lost ;  they  were  neither  ashamed  nor 
angry.  They  were  manly  and  courteous, 
and  through  their  untrimmed  beards 
and  rough  corduroys  a  voice  said  very 
plainly  :  "  Ruling  race."  These  Boers 
might  be  brutal,  might  be  treacherous  ; 
but  they  held  their  heads  like  gentlemen. 
Tommy  and  the  veldt  peasant — a  comedy 
of  good  manners  in  wet  and  cold  and 
mud  and  blood  ! 

And  so  the  long,  long  night  wore  on. 
At  midnight  came  outlandish  Indians 
staggering  under  the  green-curtained 
palanquins  they  call  doolies  ;  these  were 
filled  up  and  taken  away  to  the  Elands- 
laagte  Station.  At  one  o'clock  we  had 
the  rare  sight  of  a  general  under  a  waggon 
trying  to  sleep  and  two  privates  on  top 
of  it  rummaging  for  loot.  One  found 
himself  a  stock  of  gent's  underwear,  and 
contrived  comforters  and  gloves  there- 
with ;  one  got  his  fingers  into  a  case  and 


THE   BIVOUAC.  73 

ate  cooking  raisins.  Once,  when  a  few 
were  as  near  sleep  as  any  were  that 
night,  there  was  a  rattle  and  there  was 
a  clash  that  brought  a  hundred  men 
springing  up  and  reaching  for  their  rifles. 
On  the  ground  lay  a  bucket,  a  cooking- 
pot,  a  couple  of  tin  plates,  and  knives 
and  forks — all  emptied  out  of  a  sack. 
On  top  of  them  descended  from  the 
waggon  on  high  a  flame-coloured  shock 
of  hair  surmounting  a  freckled  face,  a 
covert  coat,  a  kummerbund,  and  cloth 
gaiters.  Were  we  mad  ?  Was  it  an  appa- 
rition, or  was  that  under  the  kummer- 
bund a  bit  of  kilt  and  an  end  of  spooran  ? 
Then  said  a  voice,  "  Ould  Oireland  in 
throuble  again  !  Oi'm  an  Oirish  High- 
lander ;  I  beg  your  pardon,  sorr — and  in 
throuble  again.  They  tould  me  there 
was  a  box  of  cigars  here ;  do  ye  know, 
sorr,  if  the  bhoys  have  shmoked  them 
all?" 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

THE    HOME-COMING    FROM    DUNDEE. 

Ladysmith,  October  27. 

"  Come  to  meet  us ! "  cried  the  staff 
officer  with  amazement  in  his  voice ; 
"  what  on  earth  for  ?  "  / 

It  was  on  October  25,  about  five  miles 
out  on  the  Helpmakaar  road,  which  runs 
east  from  Ladysmith.  By  the  stream 
below  the  hill  he  had  just  trotted  down, 
and  choking  the  pass  beyond,  wriggled 
the  familiar  tail  of  waggons  and  water 
carts,  ambulances,  and  doolies,  and  spare 
teams  of  old  mules  in  new  harness.  A 
couple  of  squadrons  of  Lancers  had  off- 
saddled  by  the  roadside,  a  phalanx  of 
horses  topped  with  furled  red  and  white 
pennons.  Behind  them  stood  a  battery 
of  artillery.  Half  a  battalion  of  green- 
74 


THE   HOME-COMING   FROM   DUNDEE.       7$ 

kilted  Gordons  sunned  their  bare  knees 
a  little  lower  down  ;  a  company  or  two 
of  Manchesters  back-boned  the  flabby 
convoy.  The  staff  officer  could  not 
make  out  what  in  the  world  it  meant. 

He  had  pushed  on  from  the  Dundee 
column,  but  it  was  a  childish  superstition 
to  imagine  that  the  Dundee  column  could 
possibly  need  assistance.  They  had  only 
marched  thirty-odd  miles  on  Monday  and 
Tuesday  ;  starting  at  four  in  the  morning 
they  would  by  two  o'clock  or  so  have  cov- 
ered the  seventeen  miles  that  would  bring 
them  into  camp,  fifteen  miles  outside 
Ladysmith.  They  w^ere  coming  to  help 
Ladysmith,  if  you  like  ;  but  the  idea  of 
Ladysmith  helping  them  ! 

At  his  urgency  they  sent  the  convoy 
back.  I  rode  on  miles  through  the  open- 
est  country  I  had  yet  seen  hereabouts — 
a  basin  of  wave-like  veldt,  just  growing 
thinly  green  under  the  spring  rains, 
spangled    with    budding    mimosa-thorn. 


']6         FROM  CAPETOWN  TO  LADYSMITH. 

Scarred  here  and  there  with  the  dry 
water-courses  they  call  sluits,  patched  with 
heaves  of  wire-fenced  down,  livened  with 
a  verandah,  blue  cactus-hedged  farmhouse 
or  two,  losing  itself  finally  in  a  mazy 
fairyland  of  azure  mountains — this  valley 
was  the  nearest  approach  to  what  you 
would  call  a  smiling  country  I  had  seen  in 
Africa. 

Eight  miles  or  so  along  the  road  I 
came  upon  the  Border  Mounted  Rifles, 
saddles  off,  and  lolling  on  the  grass.  All 
farmers  and  transport  drivers  from  the 
northern  frontier,  lean  bearded,  sun-dried, 
framed  of  steel  and  whipcord,  sitting  their 
horses  like  the  riders  of  the  Elgin  mar- 
bles, swift  and  cunning  as  Boers,  and  far 
braver,  they  are  the  heaven-sent  type  of 
irregular  troopers.  It  was  they  who  had 
ridden  out  and  made  connection  with  the 
returning  column  an  hour  before. 

Two  miles  on  I  dipped  over  a  ridge — 
and  here  was    the   camp.     Bugles   sang 


THE   HOME-COMING  FROM  DUNDEE.       TJ 

cheerily  ;  mules,  linked  in  fives,  were  be- 
ing zigzagged  frowardly  down  to  water. 
The  Royal  Irish  Fusiliers  had  loosened 
their  belts,  but  not  their  sturdy  bearing. 
Under  their  horses'  bellies  lay  the  dimin- 
ished 1 8th  Hussars.  Presently  came  up 
a  subaltern  of  the  regiment,  who  had 
been  on  leave  and  returned  just  too  late 
to  rejoin  before  the  line  was  cut.  They 
had  put  him  in  command  of  the  advance 
troop  of  the  Lancers,  and  how  he  cursed 
the  infantry  and  the  convoy,  and  how  he 
shoved  the  troop  along  when  the  drag 
was  taken  off !  Now  he  was  laughing 
and  talking  and  listening  all  at  once,  like 
a  long  wanderer  at  his  home-coming. 

No  use  waiting  for  sensational  stories 
among  these  men,  going  about  their  daily 
camp  duties  as  if  battles  and  sieges  and 
forced  marches  with  the  enemy  on  your 
flank  were  the  most  ordinary  business  of 
life.  No  use  waiting  for  fighting  either  ; 
in    open    country   the    force  could  have 


78    FROM  CAPETOWN  TO  LADYSMITH. 

knocked  thousands  of  Boers  to  pieces, 
and  there  was  not  the  least  chance  of  the 
Boers  coming  to  be  knocked.  So  I  rode 
back  through  the  rolling  veldt  basin.  As 
I  passed  the  stream  and  the  nek  beyond, 
the  battery  of  artillery,  the  Gordons  and 
Manchesters  were  lighting  their  bivouac 
fires.  This  pass,  crevicing  under  the  solid 
feet  of  two  great  stony  kopjes,  was  the 
only  place  the  Boers  would  be  likely  to  try 
their  luck  at.  It  was  covered  ;  already 
the  Dundee  column  was  all  right. 

Presently  I  met  the  rest  of  the  Gor- 
dons, swinging  along  the  road  to  crown 
the  heights  on  either  side  the  nek.  Com- 
ing through  I  noticed — and  the  kilted 
Highlanders  noticed,  too;  they  were  stay- 
ing out  all  night — that  the  sky  over  Lady- 
smith  was  very  black.  The  great  inky 
stain  of  cloud  spread  and  ran  up  the 
heavens,  then  down  to  the  whole  circum- 
ference. In  five  minutes  it  was  night  and 
rainstorm.     It  stung  like  a  whip-lash  ;  to 


THE   HOME-COMING   FROM   DUNDEE.        79 

meet  it  was  like  riding  into  a  wall.  Lady- 
smith  streets  were  ankle  deep  in  half  an 
hour ;  the  camps  were  morass  and  pond. 
And  listening  to  the  ever-fresh  bursts 
hammering  all  the  evening  on  to  deepen- 
ing pools,  we  learned  that  the  Dundee 
men  had  not  camped  after  all,  had 
marched  at  six,  and  were  coming  on  all 
night  into  Ladysmith.  Thirty-two  miles 
without  rest,  through  stinging  cataract 
and  spongy  loam  and  glassy  slime  ! 

Before  next  morning  was  grey  in  came 
the  1st  Rifles.  They  plashed  uphill  to 
their  blue-roofed  huts  on  the  southwest 
side  of  the  town.  By  the  time  the  sun 
was  up  they  were  fed  by  their  sister 
battalion,  the  2d,  and  had  begun  to  un- 
wind their  putties.  But  what  a  sight  ! 
Their  putties  were  not  soaked  and  not 
caked  ;  say,  rather,  that  there  may  have 
been  a  core  of  puttie  inside,  but  that  the 
men's  legs  were  embedded  in  a  serpentine 
cast   of   clay.     As    for  their   boots,    you 


80         FROM   CAPETOWN   TO   LADYSMITH. 

could  only  infer  them  from  the  huge 
balls  of  stratified  mud  they  bore  round 
their  feet.  Red  mud,  yellow  mud,  black 
mud,  brown  mud — they  lifted  their  feet 
toilsomely ;  they  were  land  plummets 
that  had  sucked  up  specimens  of  all  the 
heavy,  sticky  soils  for  fifteen  miles. 
Ofificers  and  men  alike  bristled  stiff  with 
a  week's  beard.  Rents  in  their  khaki 
showed  white  skin  ;  from  their  grimed 
hands  and  heads  you  might  have  judged 
them  half  red  men,  half  soot-black.  Eye- 
lids hung  fat  and  heavy  over  hollow 
cheeks  and  pointed  cheek-bones.  Only 
the  eye  remained — the  sky-blue,  steel- 
keen,  hard,  clear,  unconquerable  English 
eye — to  tell  that  thirty-two  miles  without 
rest,  four  days  without  a  square  meal,  six 
nights — for  many — without  a  stretch  of 
sleep,  still  found  them  soldiers  at  the  end. 
That  was  the  beginning  of  them  ;  but 
they  were  not  all  in  till  the  middle  of  the 
afternoon — which   made  thirty-six  hours 


THE   HOME-COMING   FROM    DUNDEE.       8l 

on  their  legs.  The  Irish  Fusiliers 
tramped  in  at  lunch-time — going  a  bit 
short  some  of  them,  nearly  all  a  trifle 
stiff  on  the  feet — but  solid,  square,  and 
sturdy  from  the  knees  upward.  They 
straightened  up  to  the  cheers  that  met 
them,  and  stepped  out  on  scorching  feet 
as  if  they  were  ready  to  go  into  action 
again  on  the  instant.  After  them  came 
the  guns — not  the  sleek  creatures  of 
Laffan's  Plain,  rough  with  earth  and  spin- 
ning mud  from  their  wheels,  but  war- 
worn and  fresh  from  slaughter ;  you 
might  imagine  their  damp  muzzles  were 
dripping  blood.  You  could  count  the 
horses'  ribs  ;  they  looked  as  if  you  could 
break  them  in  half  before  the  quarters. 
But  they,  too,  knew  they  were  being 
cheered  ;  they  threw  their  ears  up  and 
flung  all  the  weight  left  them  into  the 
traces. 

Through    fire,    water,    and    earth,    the 
Dundee  column  had  come  home  again. 


CHAPTER    IX. 

THE    STORY    OF    NICHOLSON'S    NEK. 

Ladysmith,  November  i. 
The  sodden  tents  hung  dankly,  black- 
grey  in  the  gusty,  rainy  morning.  At 
the  entrance  to  the  camp  stood  a  sentry ; 
half-a-dozen  privates  moved  to  and  fro. 
Perhaps  half-a-dozen  were  to  be  seen  in 
all — the  same  hard,  thick-set  bodies  that 
Ladysmith  had  cheered  six  days  before 
as  they  marched  in,  square-shouldered, 
through  the  mud,  from  Dundee.  The 
same  bodies — but  the  elastic  was  out  of 
them  and  the  brightness  was  not  in  their 
eyes.  But  for  these  few,  though  it  was 
an  hour  after  reveilU,  the  camp  was  cold 
and  empty.  It  was  the  camp  of  the 
Royal  Irish  Fusiliers. 

82 


THE  STORY   OF  NICHOLSON  S  NEK.        83 

An  officer  appeared  from  the  mess- 
tent — pale  and  pinched.  I  saw  him 
when  he  came  in  from  Dundee  with  four 
sleepless  nights  behind  him  ;  this  morn- 
ing he  was  far  more  haggard.  Inside 
were  one  other  officer,  the  doctor,  and 
the  quartermaster.  That  was  all  the 
mess,  except  a  second  lieutenant,  a  boy- 
just  green  from  Sandhurst.  He  had 
just  arrived  from  England,  aflame  for 
his  first  regiment  and  his  first  campaign. 
And  this  was  the  regiment  he  found. 

They  had  been  busy  half  the  night 
packing  up  the  lost  officers'  kits  to  send 
down  to  Durban.  Now  they  were  pack- 
ing their  own  ;  a  regiment  220  strong 
could  do  with  a  smaller  camp.  The 
mess  stores  laid  in  at  Ladysmith  stood 
in  open  cases  round  the  tent.  All  the 
small  luxuries  the  careful  mess-president 
had  provided  against  the  hard  campaign 
had  been  lost  at  Dundee.  Now  it  was 
the   regiment   was   lost,    and   there   was 


84         FROM   CAPETOWN  TO   LADYSMITH. 

nobody  to  eat  the  tinned  meats  and 
pickles.  The  common  words  "  Natal 
Field  Force"  on  the  boxes  cut  like  a 
knife.  In  the  middle  of  the  tent,  on  a 
table  of  cases,  so  low  that  to  reach  it  you 
must  sit  on  the  ground,  were  the  ja- 
panned tin  plates  and  mugs  for  five 
men's  breakfast — five  out  of  five-and- 
twenty.  Tied  up  in  a  waterproof  sheet 
were  the  officers'  letters — the  letters  of 
their  wives  and  mothers  that  had  arrived 
that  morning  seven  thousand  miles  from 
home.  The  mjen  they  wrote  to  were  on 
their  way  to  the  prisoners'  camp  on 
Pretoria  racecourse. 

A  miserable  tale  is  best  told  badly. 
On  the  night  of  Sunday,  October  29, 
No.  ID  Mountain  Battery,  four  and  a 
half  companies  of  the  Gloucestershire 
Regiment,  and  six  of  the  Royal  Irish 
Fusiliers — some  1000  men  in  all — were 
sent  out  to  seize  a  nek  some  seven  miles 
northwest  of  Ladysmith.     At   daybreak 


THE  STORY   OF  NICHOLSON'S  NEK.        85 

they  were  to  operate  on  the  enemy's 
right  flank — the  parallel  with  Majuba  is 
grimly  obvious — in  conjunction  with  an 
attack  from  Ladysmith  on  his  centre  and 
right.  They  started.  At  half-past  ten 
they  passed  through  a  kind  of  defile,  the 
Boers  a  thousand  feet  above  them 
following  every  movement  by  ear,  if  not 
by  eye.  By  some  means — either  by 
rocks  rolled  down  on  them  or  other 
hostile  agency,  or  by  sheer  bad  luck — 
the  small-arm  ammunition  mules  were 
stampeded.  They  dashed  back  on  to 
the  battery  mules  ;  there  was  alarm,  con- 
fusion, shots  flying — and  the  battery 
mules  stampeded  also. 

On  that  the  officer  in  command 
appears  to  have  resolved  to  occupy  the 
nearest  hill.  He  did  so,  and  the  men 
spent  the  hours  before  dawn  in  protect- 
ing themselves  by  schanzes  or  breast- 
works of  stones.  At  dawn,  about  half- 
past   four,    they   were   attacked   at    first 


86         FROM    CAPETOWN  TO    LADYSMITH. 

lightly.  There  were  two  companies  of 
the  Gloucesters  in  an  advanced  position  ; 
the  rest,  in  close  order,  occupied  a  high 
point  on  the  kopje  ;  to  line  the  whole 
summit,  they  say,  would  have  needed 
10,000  men.  Behind  the  schanzes  the 
men,  shooting  sparely  because  of  the  loss 
of  the  reserve  ammunition,  at  first  held 
their  own  with  little  loss. 

But  then,  as  our  ill-luck  or  Boer  good 
management  would  have  it,  there 
appeared  over  a  hill  a  new  Boer  com- 
mando, which  a  cool  eyewitness  put  at 
over  2000  strong.  They  divided  and 
came  into  action,  half  in  front,  half  from 
the  kopjes  in  rear,  shooting  at  1000 
yards  into  the  open  rear  of  the  schanzes. 
Men  began  to  fall.  The  two  advanced 
companies  were  ordered  to  fall  back ; 
up  to  now  they  had  lost  hardly  a  man, 
but  once  in  the  open  they  suffered.  The 
Boers  in  rear  picked  up  the  range  with 
great  accuracy. 


THE   STORY   OF  NICHOLSON'S  NEK.        87 

And  then — and  then  again,  that  cursed 
white  flag  ? 

It  is  some  sneaking  consolation  that 
for  a  long  time  the  soldiers  refused  to 
heed  it.  Careless  now  of  life,  they  were 
sitting  up  well  behind  their  breastworks, 
altering  their  sights,  aiming  coolly  by  the 
half-minute  together.  At  the  nadir  of 
their  humiliation  they  could  still  sting — 
as  that  new-come  Boer  found  who,  desir- 
ing one  Englishman  to  his  bag  before 
the  end,  thrust  up  his  incautious  head  to 
see  where  they  were,  and  got  a  bullet 
through  it.  Some  of  them  said  they  lost 
their  whole  firing-line ;  others  no  more 
than  nine  killed  and  sixteen  wounded. 

But  what  matters  it  whether  they  lost 
one  or  one  million  ?  The  cursed  white 
flag  was  up  again  over  a  British  force  in 
South  Africa.  The  best  part  of  a  thou-  . 
sand  British  soldiers,  with  all  their  arms 
and  equipment  and  four  mountain  guns, 
were    captured     by     the    enemy.      The 


88         FROM   CAPETOWN   TO   LADYSMITH. 

Boers  had  their  revenge  for  Dundee  and 
Elandslaagte  in  war  ;  now  they  took  it, 
full  measure,  in  kindness.  As  Atkins 
had  tended  their  wounded  and  succoured 
their  prisoners  there,  so  they  tended  and 
succoured  him  here.  One  commandant 
wished  to  send  the  wounded  to  Pretoria  ; 
the  others,  more  prudent  as  well  as  more 
humane,  decided  to  send  them  back  into 
Ladysmith.  They  gave  the  whole  men 
the  water  out  of  their  own  bottles ;  they 
gave  the  wounded  the  blankets  off  their 
own  saddles  and  slept  themselves  on  the 
naked  veldt.  They  were  short  of  trans- 
port, and  they  were  mostly  armed  with 
Martinis ;  yet  they  gave  captured  mules 
for  the  hospital  panniers  and  captured 
Lee-Metfords  for  splints.  A  man  was 
rubbing  a  hot  sore  on  his  head  with  a 
half-crown ;  nobody  offered  to  take  it 
from  him.  Some  of  them  asked  soldiers 
for  their  embroidered  waist-belts  as 
mementoes    of    the  day.     "  It's  got  my 


THE   STORY   OF  NICHOLSON'S   NEK.        89 

money  in  it,"  replied  Tommy — a  little 
surly,  small  wonder — and  the  captor  said 
no  more. 

Then  they  set  to  singing  doleful  hymns 
of  praise  under  trees.  Apparently  they 
were  not  especially  elated.  They  be- 
lieved that  Sir  George  White  was  a  pris- 
oner, and  that  we  were  flying  in  rout 
from  Ladysmith.  They  said  that  they 
had  Rhodes  shut  up  in  Kimberley,  and 
would  hang  him  when  they  caught  him. 
That  on  their  side — and  on  ours  ?  We 
fought  them  all  that  morning  in  a 
fight  that  for  the  moment  may  wait.  At 
the  end,  when  the  tardy  truth  could  be 
withheld  no  more — what  shame  !  What 
bitter  shame  for  all  the  camp !  All 
ashamed  for  England  !  Not  of  her — 
never  that ! — but  for  her.  Once  more 
she  was  a  laughter  to  her  enemies. 


CHAPTER    X. 

THE   GUNS    AT    RIETFONTEIN. 

Ladysmith,  October  26. 

The  business  of  the  last  few  days 
has  been  to  secure  the  retreat  of  the 
column  from  Dundee.  On  Monday,  the 
23d,  the  whisper  began  to  fly  round 
Ladj^smith  that  Colonel  Yule's  force  had 
left  town  and  camp,  and  was  endeavour- 
ing to  join  us.  On  Tuesday  it  became 
certainty. 

At  four  in  the  dim  morning  guns  be- 
gan to  roll  and  rattle  through  the  mud- 
greased  streets  of  Ladysmith.  By  six 
the  whole  northern  road  was  jammed 
tight  with  bearer  company,  field  hospital, 
ammunition  column,  supply  column — all 
the    stiff,   unwieldy,    crawling  tail    of  an 

army.       Indians  tottered  and    staggered 
90 


THE   GUNS  AT   RIETFONTEIN.  9I 

under  green-curtained  doolies  ;  Kaffir 
boys  guided  spans  of  four  and  five  and 
six  mules  drawing  ambulances,  like 
bakers'  vans  ;  others  walked  beside  wag- 
gons curling  whips  that  would  dwarf  the 
biggest  salmon-rod  round  the  flanks  of 
small-bodied,  huge-horned  oxen.  This 
tail  of  the  army  alone  covered  three 
miles  of  road.  At  length  emerging  in 
front  of  them  you  found  two  clanking 
field  batteries,  and  sections  of  mountain 
guns  jingling  on  mules.  Ahead  of  these 
again  long  khaki  lines  of  infantry  sat  be- 
side the  road  or  pounded  it  under  their 
even  tramp.  Then  the  General  himself 
and  his  Staff ;  then  best  part  of  a  regi- 
ment of  infantry ;  then  a  company,  the 
reserve  of  the  advanced-guard ;  then  a 
half-company,  the  support ;  then  a  broken 
group  of  men,  the  advanced  party  ;  then, 
in  the  very  front,  the  point,  a  sergeant 
and  half-a-dozen  privates  trudging  sturdily 
along  the  road,  the  scenting  nose  of  the 


92         FROM   CAPETOWN  TO   LADYSMITH. 

column.  Away  out  of  sight  were  the 
horsemen. 

Altogether,  two  regiments  of  cavalry — 
5th  Lancers  and  19th  Hussars — the  42d 
and  53d  Field  Batteries  and  loth  Moun- 
tain Battery,  four  infantry  battalions — 
Devons,  Liverpools,  Gloucesters,  and  2d 
King's  Royal  Rifles — the  Imperial  Light 
Horse,  and  the  Natal  Volunteers.  Once 
more,  it  was  fighting.  The  head  of  the 
column  had  come  within  three  miles  or 
so  of  Modderspruit  station.  The  valley 
there  is  broad  and  open.  On  the  left 
runs  the  wire-fenced  railway  ;  beyond  it 
the  land  rises  to  a  high  green  mountain 
called  Tinta  Inyoni.  On  the  left  front  is 
a  yet  higher  green  mountain,  double- 
peaked,  called  Matawana's  Hoek.  Some 
call  the  place  Jonono's,  others  Rietfon- 
tein  ;  the  last  is  perhaps  the  least  out- 
landish. 

The  force  moved  steadily  on  towards 
Modderspruit,  one  battalion  in   front    of 


THE   GUNS  AT  RIETFONTEIN.  93 

the  ofuns.  "Tell  Hamilton  to  watch  his 
left  flank,"  said  one  in  authority.  "  The 
enemy  are  on  both  those  hills."  Sure 
enough,  there  on  the  crest,  there  dotted 
on  the  sides,  were  the  moving  black  man- 
nikins  that  we  have  already  come  to 
know  afar  as  Boers.  Presently  the 
dotted  head  and  open  files  of  a  battalion 
emerged  from  behind  the  guns,  changing 
direction  half-left  to  cover  their  flank. 
The  batteries  pushed  on  with  the  one 
battalion  ahead  of  them.  It  was  half- 
past  eight,  and  brilliant  sunshine  ;  the  air 
was  dead  still  ;  through  the  clefts  of  the 
nearer  hills  the  blue  peaks  of  the 
Drakensberg  looked  as  if  you  could  shout 
across  to  them. 

Boom !  The  sound  we  knew  well 
enough  ;  the  place  it  came  from  was  the 
left  shoulder  of  Matawana's  Hoek  ;  the 
place  it  would  arrive  at  we  waited,  half 
anxious,  half  idly  curious,  to  see. 
Whirr — whizz — e-e-e-e — phutt !        Heav- 


94         FROM   CAPETOWN  TO   LADYSMITH. 

ens,  on  to  the  very  top  of  a  gun  !  For  a 
second  the  gun  was  a  whirl  of  bkie-white 
smoke,  with  grey-black  figures  struggling 
and  plunging  inside  it.  Then  the  figures 
ofrew  blacker  and  the  smoke  cleared — 
and  in  the  name  of  wonder  the  gun  was 
still  there.  Only  a  subaltern  had  his 
horse's  blood  on  his  boot,  and  his  haver- 
sack ripped  to  rags. 

But  there  was  no  time  to  look  on  that 
or  anything  else  but  the  amazing  nimble- 
ness  of  the  guns.  At  the  shell — even 
before  it — they  flew  apart  like  ants  from 
a  watering-can.  From  crawling  reptiles 
they  leaped  into  scurrying  insects — the 
legs  of  the  eight  horses  pattering  as  if 
they  belonged  all  to  one  creature,  the 
deadly  sting  in  the  tail  leaping  and 
twitching  with  every  movement.  One 
battery  had  wheeled  about,  and  was 
drawn  back  at  wide  intervals  facing  the 
Boer  hill.  Another  was  pattering  swiftly 
under   cover   of   a   ridge   leftward ;    the 


THE   GUNS  AT   RIETFONREIN.  95 

leading  gun  had  crossed  the  railway  ;  the 
last  had  followed ;  the  battery  had 
utterly  disappeared.  Boom !  Whirr — 
whizz  —  e-e-e-e  —  phutt !  The  second 
Boer  shell  fell  stupidly,  and  burst  in  the 
empty  veldt.  Then  bang ! — from  across 
the  railway  —  e-e-e-e  —  whizz — whirr  — 
silence — and  then  the  little  white  balloon 
just  over  the  place  the  Boer  shell  came 
from.  It  was  twenty-five  minutes  to 
nine. 

In  a  double  chorus  of  bangs  and 
booms  the  infantry  began  to  deploy. 
Gloucesters  and  Devons  wheeled  half- 
left  off  the  road,  split  into  firing  line 
and  supports  in  open  order,  trampled 
through  the  wire  fences  over  the  railway. 
In  front  of  the  Boer  position,  slightly 
commanded  on  the  left  flank  by  Tinta 
Inyoni,  was  a  low,  stony  ridge  ;  this  the 
Gloucesters  lined  on  the  left.  The 
Devons,  who  led  the  column,  fell  natur- 
ally on  to  the  right  of  the  line  ;  Liver- 


96         FROM   CAPETOWN   TO   LADYSMITH. 

pools  and  Rifles  backed  up  right  and 
left.  But  almost  before  they  were  there 
arrived  the  irrepressible,  ubiquitous  guns. 
They  had  silenced  the  enemy's  guns  ; 
they  had  circled  round  the  left  till  they 
came  under  cover  of  the  ridge  ;  now  they 
strolled  up,  unlimbered,  and  thrust  their 
grim  noses  over  the  brow.  And  then — 
whew  !  Their  appearance  was  the  signal 
for  a  cataract  of  bullets  that  for  the  mo- 
ment in  places  almost  equalled  the  high- 
lead  mark  of  Elandslaagte.  The  air 
whistled  and  hummed  with  them — and 
then  the  guns  began. 

The  mountain  guns  came  up  on  their 
mules — a  drove  of  stupid,  uncontrolled 
creatures,  you  would  have  said,  lumbered 
up  with  the  odds  and  ends  of  an  iron- 
works and  a  waggon-factory.  But  the 
moment  they  were  in  position  the 
gunners  swarmed  upon  them,  and  till 
you  have  seen  the  garrison  gunners 
working   you   do   not   know   what  work 


THE   GUNS  AT   RIETFONTEIN.  97 

means.  In  a  minute  the  scrap-heaps  had 
flown  together  into  Httle  guns,  hugging 
the  stones  with  their  low  belHes,  jumping 
at  the  enemy  as  the  men  lay  on  to  the 
ropes.  The  detachments  all  cuddled 
down  to  their  guns ;  a  man  knelt  by  the 
ammunition  twenty  paces  in  rear;  the 
mules  by  now  were  snug  under  cover. 
"Two  thousand,"  sang  out  the  major. 
The  No.  I  of  each  gun  held  up  some- 
thing like  a  cross,  as  if  he  were  going 
through  a  religious  rite,  altered  the 
elevation  delicately,  then  flung  up  his 
hand  and  head  stiffly,  like  a  dog  point- 
ing. "  Number  4" — and  Number  4  gun 
hurled  out  fire  and  filmy  smoke,  then 
leaped  back,  half  frightened  at  its  own 
fury,  half  anxious  to  get  a  better  view  of 
what  it  had  done.  It  was  a  little  over. 
"  Nineteen  hundred,"  cried  the  major, 
Same  ritual,  only  a  little  short.  "  Nine- 
teen fifty — and  it  was  just  right.  There- 
with  field   and   mountain   gun,  yard  by 


98         FROM  CAPETOWN   TO   LADYSMITH. 

yard,  up  and  down,  right  and  left,  care- 
fully, methodically,  though  roughly, 
sowed  the  whole  of  Matawana's  Hoek 
with  bullets. 

It  was  almost  magical  the  way  the  Boer 
fire  dropped.  The  guns  came  into  action 
about  a  quarter-past  nine,  and  for  an 
hour  you  would  hardly  have  known  they 
were  there.  Whenever  a  group  put  their 
heads  over  the  sky-line  1950  yards  away 
there  came  a  round  of  shrapnel  to  drive 
them  to  earth  again.  Presently  the  hill- 
side turned  pale  blue — blue  with  the 
smoke  of  burning  veldt.  Then  in  the 
middle  of  the  blue  came  a  patch  of  black, 
and  spread  and  spread  till  the  huge 
expanse  was  all  black,  pocked  with  the 
khaki-coloured  boulders  and  bordered 
with  the  blue  of  the  ever-extending  fire. 
God  help  any  wounded  enemy  who  lay 
there ! 

Crushed  into  the  face  of  the  earth  by 
the  guns,  the  enemy  tried  to  work  round 


THE   GUNS   AT    RIETFONTEIN.  99 

our  left  from  Tinta  Inyoni.  They  tried 
first  at  about  a  quarter-past  ten,  but  the 
Natal  Volunteers  and  some  of  the  Im- 
perial Light  Horse  met  them.  We  heard 
the  rattle  of  their  rifles  ;  we  heard  the  rap- 
rap-rap-rap-rap  of  their  Maxim  knocking 
at  the  door,  and  the  Boer  fire  stilled 
again.  The  Boer  gun  had  had  another 
try  at  the  Volunteers  before,  but  a  round 
or  two  of  shrapnel  sent  it  to  kennel 
again.  So  far  we  had  seemed  to  be 
losing  nothing,  and  it  was  natural  to  sup- 
pose that  the  Boers  were  losing  a  good 
deal.  But  at  a  quarter-past  eleven  the 
Gloucesters  pushed  a  little  too  far  be- 
tween the  two  hills,  and  learned  that  the 
Boers,  if  their  bark  was  silent  for  the 
moment,  could  still  bite.  Suddenly  there 
shot  into  them  a  cross-fire  at  a  few  hun- 
dred yards.  Down  went  the  colonel 
dead ;  down  went  fifty  men. 

For  a  second  a  few  of  the  rawer  hands 
in  the  regiment  wavered  ;  it  might  have 


lOO       FROM   CAPETOWN   TO   LADYSMITH. 

been  serious.  But  the  rest  clung  dog- 
gedly to  their  position  under  cover  ;  the 
officers  brought  the  flurried  men  up  to 
the  bit  again.  The  mountain  guns  turned 
vengeful  towards  the  spot  w^hence  the  fire 
came,  and  in  a  few  minutes  there  was 
another  spreading,  blackening  patch  of 
veldt — and  silence. 

From  then  the  action  flickered  on  till 
half-past  one.  Time  on  time  the  enemy- 
tried  to  be  at  us,  but  the  imperious  guns 
rebuked  him,  and  he  was  still.  At  length 
the  regiments  withdrew.  The  hot  guns 
limbered  up  and  left  Rietfontein  to  burn 
itself  out.  The  sweating  gunners  covered 
the  last  retiring  detachment,  then  lit  their 
pipes.  The  Boers  made  a  half-hearted 
attempt  to  get  in  both  on  left  and  right ; 
but  the  Volunteers  on  the  left,  the  cavalry 
on  the  right,  a  shell  or  two  from  the  centre, 
checked  them  as  by  machinery.  We 
went  back  to  camp  unhampered. 

And  at  the  end  of  it  all  we  found  that 


THE   GUNS   AT   RIETFONTEIN.  lOI 

in  those  five  hours  of  straggHng  bursts  of 
fighting  we  had  lost,  killed  and  wounded, 
ii6  men.  And  what  was  the  good? 
asked  doubting  Thomas.  Much.  To  be- 
gin with,  the  Boers  must  have  lost  heavily; 
they  confessed  that  aloud  by  the  fact 
that,  for  all  their  pluck  in  standing  up  to 
the  guns,  they  made  no  attempt  to  follow 
us  home.  Second,  and  more  important, 
this  commando  was  driven  westward,  and 
others  were  drawn  westward  to  aid  it — 
and  the  Dundee  force  was  marching  in 
from  the  east.  Dragging  sore  feet  along 
the  miry  roads  they  heard  the  guns  at 
Rietfontein  and  were  glad.  The  seeming 
objectless  cannonade  secured  the  unhar- 
assed  home-coming  of  the  4000  way- 
weary  marchers  from  Dundee. 


CHAPTER   XI. 

THE    BOMBARDMENT. 

Ladysmith,  November  lo. 

"  Good  morning,"  banged  four-point- 
seven  ;  "  have  you  used  Long  Tom  ?" 

"  Crack-k — whiz-z-z,"  came  the  riving 
answer,  "we  have." 

"  Whish-h — patter,  patter,"  chimed  in 
a  cloud-high  shrapnel  from  Bulwan.  It 
was  half-past  seven  in  the  morning  of 
November  7  ;  the  real  bombardment,  the 
terrific  symphony,  had  begun. 

During  the  first  movement  the  leading 
performer  was  Long  Tom.  He  is  a 
friendly  old  gun,  and  for  my  part  I  have 
none  but  the  kindest  feelings  towards 
him.  It  was  his  duty  to  shell  us,  and  he 
did ;  but  he  did  it  in  an  open,  manly 
way. 


THE   BOMBARDMENT.  IO3 

Behind   the   half-county   of   light    red 
soil  they  had  piled  up  round   him  you 
could   see    his   ugly  phiz  thrust  up  and 
look   hungrily   around.     A   jet  of  flame 
and  a  spreading  toadstool  of  thick  white 
smoke   told   us   he   had  fired.      On   the 
flash  four-point-seven  banged  his   punc- 
tilious reply.     You  waited  until  you  saw 
the   black   smoke   jump   behind  the  red 
mound,  then  Tom  was  due  in  a  second 
or  two.     A   red   flash — a  jump   of   red- 
brown  dust  and  smoke — a  rending-crash  : 
he    had    arrived.      Then     sank     slowly 
through    the     air     his     fragments,    like 
wounded   birds.     You    could   hear  them 
coming,    and   they   came   with   dignified 
slowness :    there  was  plenty  of   time  to 
get  out  of  the  way. 

Until  the  capture  of  Long  Tom — 
when  he  will  be  treated  with  the  utmost 
consideration — I  am  not  able  to  tell  you 
exactly  what  brand  of  gun  he  may  be. 
It  is  evident  from  his  conservative  use  of 


104      FROM   CAPETOWN  TO   LADYSMITH. 

black  powder,  and  the  old-gentlemanly 
staidness  of  his  movements,  that  he  is  an 
elderly  gun.  His  calibre  appears  to  be 
six  inches.  From  the  plunging  nature  of 
his  fire,  some  have  conjectured  him  a  sort 
of  howitzer,  but  it  is  next  to  certain  he  is 
one  of  the  sixteen  i5-cm.  Creusot  guns 
bought  for  the  forts  of  Pretoria  and 
Johannesburg.  Anyhow,  he  conducted 
his  enforced  task  with  all  possible  hu- 
manity. 

On  this  same  7th  a  brother  Long  Tom, 
by  the  name  of  Fiddling  Jimmy,  opened 
on  the  Manchesters  and  Caesar's  Camp 
from  a  flat-topped  kopje  three  or  four 
miles  south  of  them.  This  gun  had  been 
there  certainly  since  the  3d,  when  it 
shelled  our  returning  reconnaissance  ; 
but  he,  too,  was  a  gentle  creature,  and 
did  little  harm  to  anybody.  Next  day  a 
third  brother.  Puffing  Billy,  made  a 
somewhat  bashful  first  appearance  on 
Bulwan.     Four    rounds   from    the    four- 


THE  BOMBARDMENT.  105 

point-seven  silenced  him  for  the  day. 
Later  came  other  brothers,  of  whom  you 
will  hear  in  due  course. 

In  general  you  may  say  of  the  Long 
Tom  family  that  their  favourite  habitat 
is  among  loose  soil  on  the  tops  of  open 
hills ;  they  are  slow  and  unwieldy,  and 
very  open  in  all  their  actions.  They  are 
good  shooting  guns ;  Tom  on  the  7th 
made  a  day's  lovely  practice  all  round 
our  battery.  They  are  impossible  to 
disable  behind  their  huge  epaulements 
unless  you  actually  hit  the  gun,  and  they 
are  so  harmless  as  hardly  to  be  worth 
disabling. 

The  four  i2-pounder  field-guns  on 
Bulwan — I  say  four,  because  one  day 
there  were  four ;  but  the  Boers  con- 
tinually shifted  their  lighter  guns  from 
hill  to  hill — were  very  different.  These 
creatures  are  stealthy  in  their  habits, 
lurking  among  woods,  firing  smokeless 
powder    with    very    little    flash ;    conse- 


I06      FROM   CAPETOWN  TO   LADYSMITH. 

quently  they  are  very  difficult  guns  to 
locate.  Their  favourite  diet  appeared  to 
be  balloons;  or,  failing  them, the  Devons 
in  the  Helpmakaar  Road  or  the  Man- 
chesters  in  Caesars  Camp.  Both  of 
these  they  enfiladed  ;  also  they  peppered 
the  roads  whenever  troops  were  visible 
moving  in  or  out. 

Altogether  they  were  very  judiciously 
handled,  though  erring  perhaps  in  not 
firing  persistently  enough  at  any  one 
target.  But,  despite  their  great  altitude, 
the  range — at  least  6000  yards — and  the 
great  height  at  which  they  burst  their 
time  shrapnel,  made  them  also  com- 
paratively harmless. 

There  were  also  one  or  two  of  their 
field-guns  opposite  the  Manchesters  on 
the  flat-topped  hill,  one,  I  fancy,  with 
Long  Tom  on  Pepworth's  Hill,  and  a  few 
others  on  the  northern  part  of  Lombard's 
Kop  and  on  Surprise  Hill  to  the  north- 
westward. 


THE  BOMBARDMENT.  IO7 

Westward,  on  Telegraph  Hill,  was  a 
gun  which  appeared  to  prey  exclusively 
on  cattle.  I  am  afraid  it  was  one  of  our 
own  mountain  guns  turned  cannibal. 
The  cattle,  during  the  siege,  had  of 
course  to  pasture  on  any  waste  land  in- 
side the  lines  they  could  find,  and  gath- 
ered in  dense,  distractingly  noisy  herds  ; 
but  though  this  gun  was  never  tired  of 
firing  on  the  mobs,  I  do  not  think  he  ever 
got  more  than  one  calf. 
JvThere  was  a  gun  on  Lombard's  Kop 
called  Silent  Susan — so  called  because 
the  shell  arrived  before  the  report — a 
disgusting  habit  in  a  gun.  The  mena- 
gerie was  completed  by  the  Pompoms,  of 
which  there  were  at  least  three.  This 
noisome  beast  always  lurks  in  thick  bush, 
whence  it  barks  chains  of  shell  at  the  un- 
suspecting stranger.  Fortunately  its 
shell  is  small,  and  it  is  as  timid  as  it  is 
poisonous. 

Altogether,  with  three  Long  Toms,  a 


I08       FROM   CAPETOWN   TO   LADYSMITH. 

5-inch  howitzer,  Silent  Susan,  about  a 
dozen  1 2-pounders,  four  of  our  screw  guns, 
and  three  Maxim  automatics,  they  had 
about  two  dozen  guns  on  us.  Against  that 
we  had  two  4.7-inch — named  respectively 
Lady  Ann  and  Bloody  Mary — four  naval 
1 2-pounders,  thirty-six  field-guns,  the  two 
remaining  mountain  guns,  an  old  64- 
pounder,  and  a  3-inch  quickfirer — these 
two  on  Caesar's  Camp  in  charge  of  the  Dur- 
ban Naval  Volunteers — two  old  how- 
itzers, and  two  Maxim-Nordenfeldts  taken 
at  Krugersdorp  in  the  Jameson  raid,  and 
retaken  at  Elandslaagte — fifty  pieces  in 
all. 

On  paper,  therefore,  we  had  a  great 
advantage.  But  we  had  to  economise 
ammunition,  not  knowing  when  we  should 
get  more,  and  also  to  keep  a  reserve  of 
field-guns  to  assist  any  threatened  point. 
Also  their  guns,  being  newer,  better 
pieces,  mounted  on  higher  ground,  out- 
ranged  ours.     We   had   more  guns,  but 


THE  BOMBARDMENT.  lOQ 

they  were  as  useless  as  catapults  :  only  the 
six  naval  guns  could  touch  Pepworth's 
Hill  or  Bulwan. 

For  these  reasons  we  only  fired,  I  sup- 
pose, one  shell  to  their  twenty,  or  there- 
abouts ;  so  that  though  we  actually  had 
far  more  guns,  we  yet  enjoyed  all  the 
sensations  of  a  true  bombardment. 

What  were  they  ?  That  bombard- 
ments were  a  hollow  terror  I  had  always 
understood  ;  but  how  hollow,  not  till  I 
experienced  the  bombardment  of  Lady- 
smith.  Hollow  thino^s  make  the  most 
noise,  to  be  sure,  and  this  bombardment 
could  at  times  be  a  monstrous  symphony 
indeed. 

The  first  heavy  day  was  November  3  ; 
while  the  troops  were  moving  in  and  out 
on  the  Van  Reenen's  road  the  shells 
traced  an  aerial  cobweb  all  over  us. 
After  that  was  a  lull  till  the  7th,  which 
was  another  clattering  day.  November 
8  brought  a  tumultuous  morning  and  a 


no      FROM   CAPETOWN  TO   LADYSMITH. 

Still  afternoon.  The  9th  brought  a  very 
tumultuous  morning  indeed ;  the  loth 
was  calm;  the  nth  patchy;  the  12th, 
Sunday. 

It  must  be  said  that  the  Boers  made 
war  like  gentlemen  of  leisure ;  they  re- 
stricted their  hours  of  work  with  trade 
unionist  punctuality.  Sunday  was  al- 
ways a  holiday ;  so  was  the  day  after 
any  particularly  busy  shooting.  They 
seldom  began  before  breakfast ;  knocked 
off  regularly  for  meals — the  luncheon 
interval  was  11.30  to  12  for  riflemen, 
and  12  to  12.30  for  gunners — hardly 
ever  fired  after  tea-time,  and  never  when 
it  rained.  I  believe  that  an  enterprising 
enemy  of  the  Boer  strength — it  may 
have  been  anything  from  10,000  to 
20,000 ;  and  remember  that  their  mo- 
bility made  one  man  of  them  equal  to  at 
least  two  of  our  reduced  11,000 — could, 
if  not  have  taken  Ladysmith,  at  least 
have  put  us  to  great  loss  and  discomfort. 


THE  BOMBARDMENT.  Ill 

But  the  Boers  have  the  great  defect  of 
all  amateur  soldiers  :  they  love  their 
ease,  and  do  not  mean  to  be  killed. 
Now,  without  toil  and  hazard  they  could 
not  take  Ladysmith. 

To  do  them  justice,  they  did  not  at 
first  try  to  do  wanton  damage  in  town. 
They  fired  almost  exclusively  on  the 
batteries,  the  camps,  the  balloon,  and 
moving  bodies  of  troops.  In  a  day  or 
two  the  troops  were  far  too  snugly  pro- 
tected behind  schanzes  and  reverse 
slopes,  and  grown  far  too  cunning  to 
expose  themselves  to  much  loss. 

The  inhabitants  were  mostly  under- 
ground, so  that  there  was  nothing  really 
to  suffer  except  casual  passengers,  beasts, 
and  empty  buildings.  Few  shells  fell  in 
town,  and  of  the  few  many  were  half- 
charged  with  coal-dust,  and  many  never 
burst  at  all.  The  casualties  in  Lady- 
smith  during  a  fortnight  were  one  white 
civilian,  two  natives,  a  horse,  two  mules, 


112       FROM    CAPETOWN   TO    LADYSMITH. 

a  waggon,  and  about  half-a-dozen  houses. 
And  of  the  last  only  one  was  actually 
wrecked  ;  one — of  course  the  most  de- 
sirable habitation  in  Ladysmith — re- 
ceived no  less  than  three  shells,  and  re- 
mained habitable  and  inhabited  to  the  end. 

And  now,  what  does  it  feel  like  to  be 
bombarded  ? 

At  first,  and  especially  as  early  as  can 
be  in  the  morning,  it  is  quite  an  uncom- 
fortable sensation. 

You  know  that  gunners  are  looking 
for  you  through  telescopes ;  that  every 
spot  is  commanded  by  one  big  gun  and 
most  by  a  dozen.  You  hear  the  squeal 
of  the  things  all  above,  the  crash  and  pop 
all  about,  and  wonder  when  your  turn 
will  come.  Perhaps  one  falls  quite  near 
you,  swooping  irresistibly,  as  if  the  devil 
had  kicked  it.  You  come  to  watch  for 
shells — to  listen  to  the  deafening  rattle 
of  the  big  guns,  the  shrilling  whistle  of 
the  small,  to  guess  at  their  pace  and  their 


THE   BOMBARDMENT.  II3 

direction.  You  see  now  a  house  smashed 
in,  a  heap  of  chips  and  rubble  ;  now  you 
see  a  splinter  kicking  up  a  fountain  of 
clinking  stone-shivers ;  presently  you 
meet  a  wounded  man  on  a  stretcher. 
This  is  your  dangerous  time.  If  you 
have  nothing  else  to  do,  and  especially  if 
you  listen  and  calculate,  you  are  done ; 
you  get  shells  on  the  brain,  think  and 
talk  of  nothing  else,  and  finish  by  going 
into  a  hole  in  the  ground  before  daylight, 
and  hiring  better  men  than  yourself  to 
bring  you  down  your  meals.  Whenever 
you  put  your  head  out  of  the  hole  you 
have  a  nose-breadth  escape.  If  a 
hundredth  part  of  the  providential  de- 
liverances told  in  Ladysmith  were  true, 
it  was  a  miracle  that  anybody  in  the 
place  was  alive  after  the  first  quarter  of 
an  hour.  A  day  of  this  and  you  are  a 
nerveless  semi-corpse,  twitching  at  a  fly- 
buzz,  a  misery  to  yourself  and  a  scorn  to 
your  neighbours. 


114       FROM   CAPETOWN   TO   LADYSMITH. 

If,  on  the  other  hand,  you  go  about 
your  ordinary  business,  confidence  revives 
immediately.  You  see  what  a  prodigious 
weiofht  of  metal  can  be  thrown  into  a 
small  place  and  yet  leave  plenty  of  room 
for  everybody  else.  You  realise  that  a 
shell  which  makes  a  great  noise  may  yet 
be  hundreds  of  yards  away.  You  learn 
to  distinguish  between  a  gun's  report  and 
an  overturned  water-tank's.  You  per- 
ceive that  the  most  awful  noise  of  all  is 
the  throat-ripping  cough  of  your  own 
guns  firing  over  your  head  at  an  enemy 
four  miles  away.  So  you  leave  the 
matter  to  Allah,  and  by  the  middle  of  the 
morning  do  not  even  turn  your  head  to 
see  where  the  bang  came  from. 


CHAPTER  XII. 

THE    devil's     tin-tacks. 

When  all  is  said,  there  is  nothing  to 
stir  the  blood  like  rifle-fire.  Rifle-fire 
wins  or  loses  decisive  actions ;  rifle-fire 
sends  the  heart  galloping.  At  five  in 
the  morning  of  the  9th  I  turned  on  my 
mattress  and  heard  guns  ;  I  got  up. 

Then  I  heard  the  bubble  of  distant 
musketry,  and  I  hurried  out.  It  came 
from  the  north,  and  it  was  languidly 
echoed  from  Caesar's  Camp.  Tack-tap, 
tack-tap — each  shot  echoed  a  little 
muffled  from  the  hills.  Tack-tap,  tack- 
tap,  tack,  tack,  tack,  tack,  tap — as  if  the 
devil  was  hammering  nails  into  the  hills. 
Then  a  hurricane  of  tacking,  running 
round  all  Ladysmith,  running  together 
into  a  scrunching  roar.  From  the  hill 
115 


Il6      FROM   CAPETOWN   TO   LADYSMITH. 

above  Mulberry  Grove  you  can  see  every 
shell  drop ;  but  of  this  there  was  no 
sign — only  noise  and  furious  heart-beats. 

I  went  out  to  the  strongest  firing,  and 
toiled  up  a  ladder  of  boulders.  I  came 
up  on  to  the  sky-line,  and  bent  and  stole 
forward.  To  the  right  was  Cave 
Redoubt  with  the  4. 7  ;  to  the  left  two 
field-guns,  unlimbered  and  left  alone, 
and  some  of  the  Rifle  Brigade  snug 
behind  their  stone  and  earth  schanzes. 
In  front  was  the  low,  woody,  stony  crest 
of  Observation  Hill ;  behind  was  the  tall 
table-top  of  Surprise  Hill — the  first  ours, 
the  second  the  enemy's.  Under  the 
slope  of  Observation  Hill  were  long, 
dark  lines  of  horses ;  up  to  the  sky-line, 
prolonging  the  front  leftward,  stole  half- 
a-dozen  of  the  5th  Lancers.  From  just 
beyond  them  came  the  tack,  tack,  tack, 
tap. 

Tack,  tap ;  tack,  tap — it  went  on 
minute  by  minute,  hour  by  hour. 


THE   devil's   tin-tacks.  IT/ 

The  sun  warmed  the  air  to  an  oven  ; 
painted  butterflies,  azure  and  crimson, 
came  flitting  over  the  stones ;  still  the 
devil  went  on  hammering  nails  into  the 
hills.  Down  leftward  a  black-powder 
gun  was  popping  on  the  film-cut  ridge  of 
Bluebank.  A  Boer  shell  came  fizzing 
from  the  right,  and  dived  into  a  whirl  of 
red  dust,  where  nothing  was.  Another — 
another — another,  each  pitched  with 
mathematical  accuracy  into  the  same 
nothing.  Our  gunners  ran  out  to  their 
guns,  and  flung  four  rounds  on  to  the 
shoulder  of  Surprise  Hill.  Billy  puffed 
from  Bulwan — came  10,000  yards  jarring 
and  clattering  loud  overhead — then  flung 
a  red  earthquake  just  beyond  the  Lan- 
cers' horses.  Again  and  again  ;  it 
looked  as  if  he  could  not  miss  them  ;  but 
the  horses  only  twitched  their  tails  as  if 
he  were  a  new  kind  of  fly.  The  4.7 
crashed  hoarsely  back,  and  a  black  nim- 
bus flung  up  far  above  the  trees  on  the 


Il8      FROM   CAPETOWN  TO   LADYSMITH. 

mountain.  And  still  the  steady  tack  and 
tap — from  the  right  among  the  Devons 
and  Liverpools,  from  the  right  centre, 
where  the  Leicesters  were,  from  the  left 
centre,  among  the  6oth,  and  the  extreme 
left,  from  Caesar's  Camp. 

The  fight  tacked  on  six  mortal  hours 
and  then  guttered  out.  From  the  early 
hour  they  began  and  the  number  of 
shells  and  cartridges  they  burned  I  sup- 
pose the  Boers  meant  to  do  something. 
But  at  not  one  point  did  they  gain  an 
inch.  We  were  playing  with  them — 
playing  with  them  at  their  own  game. 
One  of  our  men  would  fire  and  lie  down 
behind  a  rock  ;  the  Boers  answered  furi- 
ously for  three  minutes.  When  they 
began  to  die  down,  another  man  fired, 
and  for  another  three  minutes  the  Boers 
hammered  the  blind  rocks.  On  six 
hours'  fighting  along  a  front  of  ten  or 
twelve  miles  we  lost  three  killed  and 
seventeen  wounded.     And,  do  you  know, 


THE   DEVILS  TIN-TACKS.  II9 

I  really  believe  that  this  tack-tapping 
amonor  the  rocks  was  the  attack  after  all. 

o 

They  had  said — or  it  was  among  the 
million  things  they  were  said  to  have 
said — that  they  would  be  in  Ladysmith 
on  November  9  ;  and  I  believe  they  half 
believed  themselves.  At  any  rate  I 
make  no  doubt  that  all  this  morning  they 
were  feeling — feeling  our  thin  lines  all 
round  for  a  weak  spot  to  break  in  by. 

They  did  not  find  it,  and  they  gave 
over ;  but  they  would  have  come  had 
they  thought  they  could  come  safely. 
They  began  before  it  was  fully  light  with 
the  Manchesters.  The  Manchesters  on 
Caesar's  Camp  were,  in  a  way,  isolated : 
they  were  connected  by  telephone  with 
headquarters,  but  it  took  half  an  hour  to 
ride  up  to  their  eyrie.  They  were 
shelled  religiously  for  a  part  of  every  day 
by  Puffing  Billy  from  Bulwan  and  Fid- 
dling Jimmy  from  Middle  Hill. 

Every  officer  who  showed  got  a  round 


120       FROM   CAPETOWN  TO   LADYSMITH. 

of  shrapnel  at  him.  Their  riflemen  would 
follow  an  officer  about  all  day  with  shots 
at  2 200  yards ;  the  day  before  they  had 
hit  Major  Grant,  of  the  Intelligence,  as 
he  was  sketching  the  country.  Tommy, 
on  the  other  hand,  could  swagger  along 
the  sky-line  unmolested.  No  doubt  the 
Boers  thought  that  exposed  Csesar's 
Camp  lay  within  their  hands. 

But  they  were  very  wrong.  Snug  be- 
hind their  schanzes,  the  Manchesters 
cared  as  much  for  shells  as  for  butter- 
flies. Most  of  them  were  posted  on  the 
inner  edge  of  the  flat  top  with  a  quarter 
of  a  mile  of  naked  veldt  to  fire  across. 
They  had  been  reinforced  the  day  before 
by  a  field  battery  and  a  squadron  and  a 
half  of  the  Light  Horse.  And  they  had 
one  schajize  on  the  outer  edge  of  the  hill 
as  an  advanced  post. 

In  the  dim  of  dawn,  the  officer  in 
charge  of  this  post  saw  the  Boers  creep- 
ing down  behind  a  stone  wall  to  the  left, 


THE    DEVILS   TIN-TACKS.  121 

gathering  in  the  bottom,  advancing  on 
him  in,  for  them,  close  order.  He  welted 
them  with  rifle-fire  ;  they  scattered  and 
scurried  back. 

The  guns  got  to  work,  silenced  the 
field-guns  on  Flat  Top  Hill,  and  added 
scatter  and  scurry  to  the  assailing  rifle- 
men. Certainly  some  number  were 
killed ;  half  a  dozen  bodies,  they 
said,  lay  in  the  open  all  day  ;  lanterns 
moved  to  and  fro  amonor  the  rocks  and 
bushes  all  night ;  a  new  field  hospital  and 
graveyard  were  opened  next  day  at  Bes- 
ter's  Station.  On  the  other  horn  of  our 
position  the  Devons  had  a  brisk  morning. 
They  had  in  most  places  at  least  a  mile 
of  clear  ground  in  front  of  them.  But  be- 
yond that,  and  approaching  within  a  few 
hundred  yards  of  the  extreme  horn  of 
the  position,  is  scrub,  which  ought  to 
have  been  cut  down. 

Out  of  this  scrub  the  enemy  began  to 
snipe.     We  had  there,  tucked  into  folds  of 


122       FROM    CAPETOWN   TO   LADYSMITH. 

the  hills,  a  couple  of  tubby  old  black- 
powdered  howitzers,  and  they  let  fly 
three  rounds  which  should  have  been 
very  effective.  But  the  black  powder 
gave  away  their  position  in  a  moment, 
and  from  every  side — Pepworth's,  Lom- 
bard's Nek,  Bulwan — came  spouting  in- 
quiries to  see  who  made  that  noise.  The 
Lord  Mayor's  show  was  a  fool  to  that 
display  of  infernal  fireworks.  The  pom- 
pom added  his  bark,  but  he  has  never  yet 
bitten  anybody ;  him  the  Devons  despise, 
and  have  christened  with  a  coarse  name. 
They  weathered  the  storm  without  a  man 
touched. 

Not  a  point  had  the  Boers  gained. 
And  then  came  twelve  o'clock,  and,  if  the 
Boers  had  fixed  the  date  of  the  9th  of 
November,  so  had  we.  We  had  it  in 
mind  whose  birthday  it  was.  A  trumpet- 
major  went  forth,  and  presently,  golden- 
tongued,  rang  out,  "  God  bless  the  Prince 
of   Wales."     The   general    up    at    Cave 


THE   devil's  tin-tacks.  1 23 

Redoubt  led  the  cheers.  The  sailors' 
champagne,  like  their  shells,  is  being 
saved  for  Christmas,  but  there  was  no 
stint  of  it  to  drink  the  Prince's  health 
withal.  And  then  the  Royal  salute — 
bang  on  bang  on  bang — twenty-one  shot- 
ted guns,  as  quick  as  the  quickfirer  can 
fire,  plump  into  the  enemy. 

That  finished  it.  What  with  the  guns 
and  the  cheering,  each  Boer  commando 
must  have  thought  the  next  was  pounded 
to  mince-meat.     The  rifle-fire  dropped. 

The  devil  had  driven  home  all  his  tin- 
tacks  and  for  the  rest  of  the  day  we  had 
calm. 


CHAPTER     XIII. 

A    DIARV    OF    DULNESS. 

November  ii. — Ugh!  What  a  day! 
Dull,  cold,  dank,  and  misty — the  spit  of 
an  iith  of  November  at  home.  Not 
even  a  shell  from  Lono-  Tom  to  liven  it. 
The  High  Street  looks  doubly  dead; 
only  a  sodden  orderly  plashes  up  its 
spreading  emptiness  on  a  sodden  horse. 
The  roads  are  like  rice-pudding  already, 
and  the  paths  like  treacle.  Ugh  !  Out- 
side the  hotel  drip  the  usual  loafers  with 
the  usual  fables.  Yesterday,  I  hear,  the 
Leicesters  enticed  the  enemy  to  parade 
across  their  front  at  410  yards  ;  each  man 
emptied  his  magazine,  and  the  smarter 
got  in  a  round  or  two  of  independent  fir- 
ing besides.     Then   they  went   out    and 

counted  the  corpses — 230.     It  is  certainly 

124 


A   DIARY   OF  DULNESS.  12$ 

true  :  the  narrator  had  it  from  a  man  who 
was  drinking  a  whiskey,  while  a  private 
of  the  regiment,  who  was  not  there  him- 
self, but  had  it  from  a  friend,  told  the 
barman. 

The  Helpmakaar  road  is  as  safe  as 
Regent  Street  to-day  ;  a  curtain  of  weep- 
ing cloud  veils  it  from  the  haunting  gun- 
ners on  Bui  wan.  Up  in  the  schanzes  the 
men  huddle  under  waterproof  sheets  to 
escape  the  pitiless  drizzle.  Only  one 
sentry  stands  up  in  long  black  overcoat 
and  grey  woollen  nightcap  pulled  down 
over  his  ears,  and  peers  out  towards 
Lombard's  Kop.  This  position  is  safe 
enough  with  the  bare  green  field  of  fire 
before  it,  and  the  sturdy,  shell-hardened 
soldiers  behind. 

But  Lord,  O  poor  Tommy  !  His  water- 
proof sheet  is  spread  out,  mud-slimed, 
over  the  top  of  the  wall  of  stone  and 
earth  and  sandbag,  and  pegged  down  in- 
side the  sckanz.    He  crouches  at  the  base 


126      FROM   CAPETOWN  TO   LADYSMITH. 

of  the  wall,  in  a  miry  hole.  Nothing  can 
keep  out  this  film  of  water.  He  sops 
and  sneezes,  runs  at  the  eyes  and  nose, 
half  manful,  half  miserable.  He  is  earn- 
ing the  shilling  a  day. 

At  lunch-time  they  began  to  shell  us 
a  bit,  and  it  was  almost  a  relief.  At  any 
rate  it  was  something  to  see  and  listen 
to.  They  were  dead-off  Mulberry  Grove 
to-day,  but  they  dotted  a  line  of  shells 
elegantly  down  the  High  Street.  The 
bag  was  unusually  good — a  couple  of 
mules  and  a  cart,  a  tennis-lawn,  and  a 
water-tank.  Towards  evening  the  voice 
of  the  pompom  was  heard  in  the  land  ; 
but  he  bagged  nothing — never  does. 

November  12. — Sunday,  and  the  few 
rifle-shots,  but  in  the  main  the  usual  calm. 
The  sky  is  neither  obscured  by  clouds 
nor  streaked  with  shells.  I  note  that  the 
Sunday  population  of  Ladysmith,  unlike 
that  of  the  City  of  London,  is  double  and 
treble  that  of  weekdays. 


A  DIARY  OF  DULNESS.  127 

Long  Tom  chipped  a  corner  off  the 
church  yesterday  ;  to-day  the  archdeacon 
preached  a  sermon  pointing  out  that  we 
are  the  heaven-appointed  instrument  to 
scourge  the  Boers.  Very  sound,  but  per- 
haps a  thought  premature. 

November  13. — Laid  three  sovs.  to  one 
with  the  "  Graphic  "  yesterday  against  to- 
day being  the  most  eventful  of  the  siege. 
He  dragged  me  out  of  bed  in  aching  cold 
at  four,  to  see  the  events. 

At  daybreak  Observation  Hill  and 
King's  Post  were  being  shelled  and  shell- 
ing back.  Half  battalions  of  the  ist, 
60th,  and  Rifle  Brigade  take  day  and  day 
about  on  Observation  Hill  and  King's 
Post,  which  is  the  continuation  of  Cave 
Redoubt.  To-day  the  60th  were  on 
Leicester  Post.  When  shells  came  over 
them  they  merely  laughed.  One  ring 
shell  burst,  fizzing  inside  a  schanz,  with  a 
steamy  curly  tail,  and  splinters  that 
wailed  a  quarter  of  a  mile  on  to  the  road 


128      FROM   CAPETOWN  TO  LADYSMITH. 

below  US  ;  the  men  only  raced  to  pick  up 
the  pieces. 

When  this  siege  is  over  this  force 
ought  to  be  the  best  fighting  men  in  the 
world.  We  are  learning  lessons  every 
day  from  the  Boer.  We  are  getting  to 
know  his  game,  and  learning  to  play  it 
ourselves. 

Our  infantry  are  already  nearly  as  pa- 
tient and  cunning  as  he ;  nothing  but 
being  shot  at  will  ever  teach  men  the  art 
of  using  cover,  but  they  get  plenty  of  that 
now^adays. 

Another  lesson  is  the  use  of  very,  very 
thin  firing-lines  of  good  shots,  with  the 
supports  snugly  concealed  :  the  other  day 
fourteen  men  of  the  Manchesters  repulsed 
200  Boers.  The  gunners  have  momen- 
tarily thrown  over  their  first  commandant 
and  cheerfully  split  up  batteries.  They 
also  lie  beneath  the  schanzes  and  let  the 
enemy  bombard  the  dumb  guns  if  he 
will — till  the  moment  comes  to  fire ;  that 


A  DIARY  OF  DULNESS.  I2g 

moment  you  need  never  be  afraid  that  the 
R.  A.  will  be  anywhere  but  with  the 
guns. 

The  enemy's  shell  and  long-range  rifle- 
fire  dropped  at  half-past  six.  The  guns 
had  breached  a  new  epaulement  on 
Thornhill's  Kop — to  the  left  of  Surprise 
Hill  and  a  few  hundred  yards  nearer — 
and  perhaps  knocked  over  a  Boer  or  two — 
perhaps  not.  None  of  our  people  hurt, 
and  a  good  appetite  for  breakfast. 

In  the  afternoon  one  of  our  guns 
on  Csesar's  Camp  smashed  a  pompom. 
Fiddling  Jimmy  has  been  waved  away,  it 
seems.  The  Manchesters  are  cosy  be- 
hind the  best  built  schanzes  in  the  envi- 
rons of  Ladysmith.  Above  the  wall  they 
have  a  double  course  of  sandbags — the 
lower  placed  endwise  across  the  stone, 
the  upper  lengthwise,  which  forms  a 
series  of  loopholes  at  the  height  of  a 
man's  shoulder. 

The  subaltern  in  command  sits  on  the 


I30      FROM   CAPETOWN  TO   LADYSMITH. 

highest  rock  Inside  ;  the  men  sit  and  lie 
about  him,  sleeping,  smoking,  reading, 
sewing,  knitting.  It  might  almost  be  a 
Dorcas  meeting. 

I  won  the  bet. 

November  14. — The  liveliest  day's 
bombardment  yet. 

A  party  of  officers  who  live  in  the 
main  street  were  waiting  for  breakfast. 
The  new  president,  in  the  next  room, 
was  just  swearing  at  the  servants  for 
being  late,  when  a  shell  came  in  at  the 
foot  of  the  outside  wall  and  burst  under 
the  breakfast-room.  The  whole  place 
was  dust  and  thunder  and  the  half-acrid, 
half-fat,  all-sickly  smell  of  melinite. 
Half  the  floor  was  chips  ;  one  plank  was 
hurled  up  and  stuck  in  the  ceiling.  All 
the  crockery  was  smashed,  and  the  clock 
thrown  down  ;  the  pictures  on  the  wall 
continued  to  survey  the  scene  through 
unbroken  glasses. 

Much  the  same  thing  happened  later 


A  DIARY   OF  DULNESS.  13I 

in  the  day  to  the  smoking-room  of  the 
Royal  Hotel.  It  also  was  inhabited  the 
minute  before,  would  have  been  inhab- 
ited the  minute  after,  but  just  then  was 
quite  empty.  We  had  a  cheerful  lunch, 
as  there  were  guns  returning  from  a 
reconnaissance,  and  they  have  adopted 
a  thoughtless  habit  of  coming  home  past 
our  house.  Briefly,  from  six  till  two 
you  would  have  said  that  the  earth  was 
being  shivered  to  matchwood  and  fine 
powder.  But,  alas  !  man  accustoms 
himself  so  quickly  to  all  things,  that  a 
bombardment  to  us,  unless  stones  actu- 
ally tinkle  on  the  roof,  is  now  as  an  egg 
without  salt. 

The  said  reconnaissance  I  did  not 
attend,  knowing  exactly  what  it  would 
be.  I  mounted  a  hill,  to  get  warm  and 
to  make  sure,  and  it  was  exactly  what  I 
knew  it  would  be.  Our  guns  fired  at 
the  Boer  guns  till  they  were  silent ;  and 
then  the  Boer  dismounted  men  fired  at 


132      FROM   CAPETOWN  TO   LADYSMITH. 

our  dismounted  men ;  then  we  came 
home.  We  had  one  wounded,  but  they 
say  they  discovered  the  Boer  strength 
on  Bluebank,  outside  Range  Post,  to  be 
500  or  600.  I  doubt  if  it  is  as  much  ; 
but,  in  any  case,  I  think  two  men  and  a 
boy  could  have  found  out  all  that  three 
batteries  and  three  regiments  did. 
With  a  little  dash,  they  could  have 
taken  the  Boer  guns  on  Bluebank;  but 
dash  there  was  not  even  a  little  of. 

November  15. — I  wake  at  12.25  ^^^^ 
morning,  apparently  dreaming  of  shell- 
fire. 

"  Fool,"  says  I  to  myself,  and  turn 
over  when — swish-h  !  pop-p  ! — by  the 
piper,  it  is  shell-fire !  Thud — thud — 
thud — ten  or  a  dozen,  I  should  say, 
counting  the  ones  that  woke  me.  What 
in  the  name  of  gunpowder  is  it  all  about? 
But  there  is  no  rifle-fire  that  I  can  hear, 
and  no  more  shells  now  ;  I  sleep  again. 

In     the     morning     they     asked     the 


A  DIARY  OF  DULNESS.  I33 

Director  of  Military  Intelligence  what 
the  shelling  was;  he  replied,  "What 
shelling?"  Nobody  knew  what  it  was, 
and  nobody  knows  yet.  They  had  a 
pretty  fable  that  the  Boers,  in  a  false 
alarm,  fired  on  each  other;  if  they  did, 
it  was  very  lucky  for  them  that  the  shells 
all  hit  Ladysmith.  My  own  notion  is 
that  they  only  did  it  to  annoy — in  which 
they  failed.  They  were  reported  in  the 
morning,  as  usual,  searching  for  bodies 
with  white  fiags  ;  but  I  think  that  is  their 
way  of  reconnoitring.  Exhausted  with 
this  effort,  the  Boers — heigh-ho  ! — did 
nothing  all  day.  Level  downpour  all  the 
afternoon,  and  Ladysmith  a  lake  of 
mud. 

November  i6 — Five  civilians  and  two 
natives  hit  by  a  shrapnel  at  the  railway 
station  ;  a  railway  guard  and  a  native 
died.  Languid  shelling  during  morn- 
ing. 

November       17. — During       morning, 


134      TROM   CAPETOWN  TO   LADYSMITH. 

languid  shelling.     Afternoon,    raining — 
Ladysmith  wallowing  deeper  than  ever. 

And  that — heigh-h-ho  ! — makes  a  week 
of  it.  Relieve  us,  in  Heaven's  name, 
good  countrymen,  or  we  die  of  dulness. 


CHAPTER  XIV. 


NEARING     THE     END. 


November  26,  1899. 

I  WAS  going  to  give  you  another  dose 
of  the  dull  diary.  But  I  haven't  the 
heart.  It  would  weary  you,  and  I  can- 
not say  how  horribly  it  would  weary  me. 

I  am  sick  of  it.  Everybody  is  sick  of 
it.  They  said  the  force  which  would  open 
the  line  and  set  us  going  against  the 
enemy  would  begin  to  land  at  Durban 
on  the  nth,  and  get  into  touch  with  us 
by  the  i6th.  Now  it  is  the  26th;  the 
force,  they  tell  us,  has  landed,  and  is 
somewhere  on  the  line  between  Maritz- 
burg  and  Estcourt;  but  of  advance  not 
a  sign. 

Buller,  they  tell  us  one  day,  is  at 
Bloemfontein  ;  next  day  he  is  coming 
135 


1^6      FROM   CAPETOWN  TO   LADYSMITH. 

round  to  Durban  ;  the  next  he  is  a  pris- 
oner in  Pretoria. 

The  only  thing  certain  is  that,  what- 
ever is  happening,  we  are  out  of  it.  We 
know  nothing  of  the  outside  ;  and  of  the 
inside  there  is  nothing  to  know. 

Weary,  stale,  flat,  unprofitable,  the 
whole  thing.  At  first  to  be  besieged 
and  bombarded  was  a  thrill ;  then  it  was 
a  joke ;  now  it  is  nothing  but  a  weary, 
weary,  weary  bore.  We  do  nothing  but 
eat  and  drink  and  sleep — just  exist  dis- 
mally. We  have  forgotten  when  the 
siege  began  ;  and  now  we  are  beginning 
not  to  care  when  it  ends. 

For  my  part,  I  feel  it  will  never  end. 

It  will  go  on  just  as  now,  languid 
fighting,  languid  cessation,  for  ever  and 
ever.  We  shall  drop  off  one  by  one,  and 
listlessly  die  of  old  age. 

And  in  the  year  2099  the  New  Zea- 
lander  antiquarian,  digging  among  the 
buried  cities  of  Natal,  will  come  upon  the 


NEARING  THE  END.  137 

forgotten  town  of  Ladysmlth.  And  he 
will  find  a  handful  of  Rip  Van  Winkle 
Boers  with  white  beards  down  to  their 
knees,  behind  quaint,  antique  guns  shell- 
ing a  cactus-grown  ruin.  Inside,  shelter- 
ing in  holes,  he  will  find  a  few  decrepit 
creatures,  very,  very  old,  the  children 
born  durinsf  the  bombardment.  He  will 
take  these  links  with  the  past  home  to 
New  Zealand.  But  they  will  be  afraid  at 
the  silence  and  security  of  peace.  Hav- 
ing never  known  anything  but  bombard- 
ment, they  will  die  of  terror  without  it. 

So  be  it.  I  shall  not  be  there  to  see. 
But  I  shall  wrap  these  lines  up  in  a  Red 
Cross  flag  and  bury  them  among  the 
ruins  of  Mulberry  Grove,  that,  after  the 
excavations,  the  unnumbered  readers  of 
the  "  Daily  Mail "  may  in  the  enlight- 
ened year  2100  know  what  a  siege  and  a 
bombardment  were  like. 

Sometimes  I  think  the  siege  would  be 
just  as  bad  without  the  bombardment. 


I3S      FROM  CAPETOWN  TO  LADYSMITH. 

In  some  ways  it  would  be  even  worse ; 
for  the  bombardment  is  something  to 
notice  and  talk  of,  albeit  languidly.  But 
the  siege  is  an  unredeemed  curse. 
Sieges  are  out  of  date.  In  the  days  of 
Troy,  to  be  besieged  or  besieger  was  the 
natural  lot  of  man  ;  to  give  ten  years  at 
a  stretch  to  it  was  all  in  a  life's  work  : 
there  was  nothing  else  to  do.  In  the 
days  when  a  great  victory  was  gained  one 
year,  and  a  fast  frigate  arrived  with  the 
news  the  next,  a  man  still  had  leisure  in 
his  life  for  a  year's  siege  now  and  again. 

But  to  the  man  of  1899 — or,  by'r  Lady, 
inclining  to  1900 — with  five  editions  of 
the  evening  papers  every  day,  a  siege  is 
a  thousand-fold  a  hardship.  We  make  it 
a  grievance  nowadays  if  we  are  a  day 
behind  the  news — news  that  concerns  us 
nothing. 

And  here  are  we  with  the  enemy  all 
round  us,  splashing  melinite  among  us  in 
most  hours  of  the  day,  and  for  the  best 


NEARING  THE   END.  I39 

part  of  a  month  we  have  not  even  had 
any  definite  news  about  the  men  for 
whom  we  must  wait  to  get  out  of  it.  We 
wait  and  wonder,  first  expectant,  pres- 
ently apathetic,  and  feel  ourselves  grow 
old. 

Furthermore,  we  are  in  prison.  We 
know  now  what  Dartmoor  feels  like. 
The  practised  vagabond  tires  in  a  fort- 
night of  a  European  capital ;  of  Lady- 
smith  he  sickens  in  three  hours. 

Even  when  we  could  ride  out  ten  or  a 
dozen  miles  into  the  country,  there  was 
little  that  was  new,  nothing  that  was 
interesting.  Now  we  lie  in  the  bottom 
of  the  saucer,  and  stare  up  at  the  pitiless 
ring  of  hills  that  bark  death.  Alwa3's 
the  same  stiff,  naked  ridges,  flat-capped 
with  our  intrenchments — always,  always 
the  same.  As  morning  hardens  to  the 
brutal  clearness  of  South  African  mid- 
day, they  march  in  on  you  till  Bulvvan 
seems   to   tower  over   your  very  heads. 


140      FROM   CAPETOWN  TO  LADYSMITH. 

There  it  is  close  over  you,  shady  and  of 
wide  prospect ;  and  if  you  try  to  go  up 
you  are  a  dead  man. 

Beyond  is  the  world — war  and  love. 
Clery  marching  on  Colenso,  and  all  that 
a  man  holds  dear  in  a  little  island  under 
the  North  Star.  But  you  sit  here  to  be 
idly  shot  at.  You  are  of  it,  but  not  in 
it — clean  out  of  the  world.  To  your 
world  and  to  yourself  you  are  every  bit 
as  good  as  dead — except  that  dead  men 
have  no  time  to  fill  in. 

I  know  now  how  a  monk  without  a 
vocation  feels.  I  know  how  a  fly  in  a 
beer-bottle  feels. 

I  know  how  it  tastes,  too. 

And  with  it  all  there  is  the  melinite 
and  the  shrapnel.  To  be  sure  they  give 
us  the  only  pin-prick  of  interest  to  be 
had  in  Ladysmith.  It  is  something 
novel  to  live  in  this  town  turned  inside 
out. 

Where   people   should    be,   the    long, 


NEARING   THE   END.  I4I 

long  day  from  dawn  to  daylight  shows 
only  a  dead  blank. 

Where  business  should  be,  the  sleepy 
shop-blinds  droop.  But  where  no  busi- 
ness should  be — along  the  crumbling  ruts 
that  lead  no  whither — clatters  waggon 
after  waggon,  with  curling  whip-lashes 
and  piles  of  bread  and  hay. 

Where  no  people  should  be — in  the 
clefts  at  the  river-bank,  in  bald  patches 
of  veldt  ringed  with  rocks,  in  overgrown 
ditches — all  these  you  find  alive  with 
men  and  beasts. 

The  place  that  a  month  ago  was  only 
fit  to  pitch  empty  meat-tins  into  is  now 
priceless  stable-room  ;  two  squadrons  of 
troop  horses  pack  flank  to  flank  inside  its 
shelter.  A  scrub-entangled  hole,  which 
perhaps  nobody  save  runaway  Kaffirs 
ever  set  foot  in  before,  is  now  the  envied 
habitation  of  the  balloon.  The  most 
worthless  rock-heap  below  a  perpendicu- 
lar slope  is  now  the  choicest  of  town  lots. 


142       FROM   CAPETOWN   TO    LADYSMITH. 

The  whole  centre  of  gravity  of  Lady- 
smith  is  changed.  Its  bellv  lies  no  long^er 
in  the  multifarious  emporia  along  the 
High  Street,  but  in  the  earth-reddened, 
half-invisible  tents  that  bashfully  mark 
the  commissariat  stores.  Its  brain  is  not 
the  Town  Hall,  the  best  target  in  Lady- 
smith,  but  Headquarters  under  the  stone- 
pocked  hill.  The  riddled  Royal  Hotel  is 
its  social  centre  no  longer ;  it  is  to  the 
trench-seamed  Sailors'  Camp  or  the  wind- 
swept shoulders  of  Caesar's  Camp  that 
men  go  to  hear  and  tell  the  news. 

Poor  Ladysmith  !  Deserted  in  its  mar- 
kets, repeopled  in  its  wastes  ;  here  ripped 
with  iron  splinters,  there  rising  again  into 
rail-roofed,  rock-walled  caves ;  trampled 
down  in  its  gardens,  manured  where 
nothing  can  ever  grow  ;  skirts  hemmed 
with  sandbaofs  and  bowels  bored  with 
tunnels — the  Boers  may  not  have  hurt 
us,  but  they  have  left  their  mark  for 
years  on  her. 


NEARING  THE   END.  I43 

They  have  not  hurt  us  much — and  yet 
the  casualties  mount  up.  Three  to-day, 
two  yesterday,  four  dead  or  dying,  and 
seven  wounded  with  one  shell — they  are 
are  nothing  at  all,  but  they  mount  up.  I 
suppose  we  stand  at  about  fifty  now,  and 
there  will  be  more  before  we  are  done 
with  it. 

And  then  there  are  moments  when 
even  this  dribbling  bombardment  can  be 
appalling. 

I  happened  into  the  centre  of  the 
town  one  day  when  the  two  big  guns 
'  were  concentrating  a  cross-fire  upon  it. 

First  from  one  side  the  shell  came 
tearing  madly  in,  with  a  shrill,  a  blast. 
A  mountain  of  earth,  and  a  hailstorm  of 
stones  on  iron  roofs.  Houses  winced 
at  the  buffet.  Men  ran  madly  away 
from  it.  A  dog  rushed  out  yelping — 
and  on  the  yelp,  from  the  other  quarter, 
came  the  next  shell.  Along  the  broad 
straight  street  not  a  vehicle,  not  a  white 


144      FROM   CAPETOWN  TO   LADYSMITPI. 

man  was  to  be  seen.  Only  a  herd  of 
niggers  cowering  under  flimsy  fences  at 
a  corner. 

Another  crash  and  quaking,  and  this 
time  in  a  cloud  of  dust  an  outbuilding 
jumped  and  tumbled  asunder.  A  horse 
streaked  down  the  street  with  trailing 
halter.  Round  the  corner  scurried  the 
niggers :  the  next  was  due  from  Pep- 
worth's. 

Then  the  tearing  scream  :  horror !  it 
was  cominQT  from  Bulwan. 

Again  the  annihilating  blast,  and  not 
ten  yards  away.  A  roof  gaped  and  a 
house  leaped  to  pieces.  A  black  reeled 
over,  then  terror  plucked  him  up  again, 
and  sent  him  running. 

Head  down,  hands  over  ears,  they 
tore  down  the  street,  and  from  the  other 
side  swooped  down  the  implacable,  irre- 
sistible next. 

You  come  out  of  the  dust  and  the 
stench  of   melinite,  not   knowing   where 


HEARING  THE   END.  I45 

you  were,  hardly  knowing  whether  you 
were  hit — only  knowing  that  the  next 
was  rushing  on  its  way.  No  eyes  to  see 
it,  no  limbs  to  escape,  no  bulwark  to 
protect,  no  army  to  avenge.  You 
squirm  between  iron  fingers. 
Nothing  to  do  but  endure. 


CHAPTER  XV. 

IN    A    CONNING-TOWER. 

Ladysmith,  December  6. 

"  There  goes  that  stinker  on  Gun 
Hill,"  said  the  captain.  "  No,  don't  get 
up;  have  some  draught  beer." 

I  did  have  some  draught  beer. 

"Wait  and  see  if  he  fires  again.  If 
he  does  we'll  go  up  into  the  conning- 
tower,  and  have  both  guns  in  action 
toge " 

Boom  !  The  captain  picked  up  his 
stick. 

"  Come  on,"  he  said. 

We  got  up  out  of  the  rocking-chairs, 
and  went  out  past  the  swinging  meat- 
safe,  under  the  big  canvas  of  the  ward- 
room,  with  its  table   piled  with  stuff  to 

read.     Trust  the  sailor  to  make  himself 
146 


IN  A   CONNING-TOWER.  I47 

at  home.  As  we  passed  through  the 
camp  the  bluejackets  rose  to  a  man  and 
lined  up  trimly  on  either  side.  Trust  the 
sailor  to  keep  his  self-respect,  even  in 
five  weeks'  beleaguered  Ladysmith. 

Up  a  knee-loosening  ladder  of  rock, 
and  we  came  out  on  to  the  green  hill-top, 
where  they  first  had  their  camp.  Among 
the  orderly  trenches,  the  sites  of  the 
deported  tents,  were  rougher  irregular 
blotches  of  hole — footprints  of  shell. 

*'  That  gunner,"  said  the  captain,  wav- 
ing his  stick  at  Surprise  Hill,  "  is  a  Ger- 
man. Nobody  but  a  German  atheist 
would  have  fired  on  us  at  breakfast, 
lunch,  and  dinner  the  same  Sunday.  It 
got  too  hot  when  he  put  one  ten  yards 
from  the  cook.  Anybody  else  we  could 
have  spared  ;  then  we  had  to  go." 

We  come  to  what  looks  like  a  sandbag 
redoubt;  but  in  the  eyes  of  heaven  is  a 
conning-tower.  On  either  side,  from  be- 
hind a  sandbag  epaulement,  a  12-pounder 


148      FROM   CAPETOWN   TO   LADYSMITH. 

and  a  Maxim  thrust  forth  vigilant  eyes. 
The  sandbag  plating  of  the  conning- 
tower  was  six  feet  thick  and  shoulder- 
high  ;  the  rivets  were  red  earth,  loose  but 
binding  ;  on  the  parapets  sprouted  tufts 
of  grass,  unabashed  and  rejoicing  in  the 
summer  weather.  Against  the  parapet 
leaned  a  couple  of  men  with  the  clean-cut, 
clean-shaven  jaw  and  chin  of  the  naval 
officer,  and  half  a  dozen  bearded  blue- 
jackets. They  stared  hard  out  of  sun- 
puckered  eyes  over  the  billows  of  kopje 
and  veldt. 

Forward  we  looked  down  on  the  one 
4.7  ;  aft  we  looked  up  to  the  other.  On 
bow  and  beam  and  quarter  we  looked  out 
to  the  enemy's  fleet.  Deserted  Pepworth's 
was  on  the  port-bow,  Gun  Hill,  under 
Lombard's  Kop,  on  the  starboard,  Bul- 
wan  abeam,  Middle  Hill  astern,  Surprise 
Hill  on  the  port-quarter. 

Every  outline  was  cut  in  adamant. 

The  Helpmakaar  Ridge,  with  its  little 


IN  A   CONNING-TOWER.  I49 

black  ants  a-crawl  on  their  hill,  was 
crushed  flat  beneath  us. 

A  couple  of  vedettes  racing  over  the 
pale  green  plain  northward  looked  as  if 
we  could  jump  on  to  their  heads.  We 
could  have  tossed  a  biscuit  over  to  Lom- 
bard's Kop.  The  great  yellow  emplace- 
ment of  their  fourth  big  piece  on  Gun 
Hill  stood  up  like  a  Spithead  Fort. 
Through  the  big  telescope  that  swings 
on  its  pivot  in  the  centre  of  the  tower  you 
could  see  that  the  Boers  were  loafing 
round  it  dressed  in  dirty  mustard-colour. 

"Left-hand  Gun  Hill  fired,  sir,"  said  a 
bluejacket,  with  his  eyes  glued  to  binoc- 
ulars. 

"At  the  balloon" — and  presently  we 
heard  the  weary  pinions  of  the  shell,  and 
saw  the  little  puff  of  white  below. 

"Ring  up  Mr.  Halsey,"  said  the 
captain. 

Then  I  was  aware  of  a  sort  of  tarpaulin 
cupboard  under  the  breastwork,  of  creep- 


150   FROM  CAPETOWN  TO  LADYSMITH. 

ing  trails  of  wire  on  the  ground,  and  of  a 
couple  of  sappers. 

The  corporal  turned  down  his  page  of 
"  Harmsworth's  Magazine,"  laid  it  on 
the  parapet,  and  dived  under  the  tar- 
paulin. 

Ting-a-ling-a-ling !  buzzed  the  tele- 
phone bell. 

The  gaunt  up-towering  mountains,  the 
long,  smooth,  deadly  guns — and  the 
telephone  bell ! 

The  mountains  and  the  guns  went  out, 
and  there  floated  in  that  roaring  oftice 
of  the  "  Daily  Mail "  instead,  and  the 
warm,  rustling  vestibule  of  the  playhouse 
on  a  December  night.  This  is  the  way 
we  make  war  now  ;  only  for  the  instant  it 
was  half  joke  and  half  home-sickness. 
Where  were  we  ?     What  were  we  doing  ? 

"  Right-hand  Gun  Hill  fired,  sir,"  came 
the  even  voice  of  the  bluejacket.  "  At 
the  balloon." 

"  Captain  wants  to  speak  to  you,  sir," 


IN  A   CONNING-TOWER.  I5I 

came  the  voice  of  the  sapper  from  under 
the  tarpaulin. 

Whistle  and  rattle  and  pop  went  the 
shell  in  the  valley  below. 

"Give  him  a  round  both  guns 
together,"  said  the  captain  to  the 
telephone. 

"Left-hand  Gun  Hill  fired,  sir,"  said 
the  bluejacket  to  the  captain. 

Nobody  cared  about  left-hand  Gun 
Hill;  he  was  only  a  4.7  howitzer;  every 
glass  was  clamped  on  the  big  yellow 
emplacement. 

"  Right-hand  Gun  Hill  is  up,  sir." 

Bang  coughs  the  forward  gun  below 
us ;  bang-g-g  coughs  the  after-gun  over- 
head. Every  glass  clamped  on  the 
emplacement. 

"What  a  time  they  take!"  sighs  a 
lieutenant — then  a  leaping  cloud  a  little 
in  front  and  to  the  right. 

"■  Damn  ! "  sighs  a  peach-cheeked  mid- 
shipman, who 


152       FROM   CAPETOWN   TO   LADYSMITH. 

"  Oh,  good  shot  ! "  For  the  second  has 
landed  just  over  and  behind  the  epaule- 
ment.     Has  it  hit  the  grun? 

"  No  such  luck,"  says  the  captain ;  he 
was  down  again  five  seconds  after  we 
fired. 

And  the  men  had  all  gone  to  earth,  of 
course. 

Ting-a-ling-a-ling ! 

Down  dives  the  sapper,  and  presently 
his  face  reappears,  with  "  Headquarters 
to  speak  to  you,  sir."  What  the  captain 
said  to  Headquarters  is  not  to  be  re- 
peated by  the  profane ;  the  captain 
knows  his  mind,  and  speaks  it.  As  soon 
as  that  was  over,  ting-a-ling  again. 

"  Mr.  Halsey  wants  to  know  if  he  may 
fire  again,  sir." 

"  He  may  have  one  more" — for  shell  is 
still  being  saved  for  Christmas. 

It  was  all  quite  unimportant  and  prob- 
ably quite  ineffective.  At  first  it  staggers 
you  to  think  that  mountain-shaking  bang 


IN  A   CONNING-TOWER.  1 53 

can  have  no  result  ;  but  after  a  little  ex- 
perience and  thought  you  see  it  would  be 
a  miracle  if  it  had.  The  emplacement  is 
a  small  mountain  in  itself ;  the  men  have 
run  out  into  holes.  Once  in  a  thousand 
shots  you  might  hit  the  actual  gun  and 
destroy  it — but  shell  is  being  saved  for 
Christmas. 

If  the  natives  and  deserters  are  not 
lying,  and  the  sailors  really  hit  Pepworth's 
Long  Tom,  then  that  gunner  may  live  on 
his  exploit  for  the  rest  of  his  life. 

"  We  trust  we've  killed  a  few  men," 
says  the  captain  cheerily  ;  "  but  we  can't 
hope  for  much  more." 

And  yet,  if  they  never  hit  a  man,  this 
handful  of  sailors  have  been  the  saving  of 
Ladysmith.  You  don't  know,  till  you 
have  tried  it,  what  a  worm  you  feel  when 
the  enemy  is  plugging  shell  into  you  and 
you  can't  possibly  plug  back.  Even 
though  they  spared  their  shell,  it  made 
all  the  world  of  difference  to  know  that 


154       FROM   CAPETOWN   TO    LADYSMITH. 

the  sailors  could  reach  the  big  guns  if 
they  ever  became  unbearable.  It  makes 
all  the  difference  to  the  Boers,  too,  I  sus- 
pect ;  for  as  sure  as  Lady  Anne  or  Bloody 
Mary  gets  on  to  them  they  shut  up  in  a 
round  or  two.  To  have  the  very  men 
among  you  makes  the  difference  between 
rain-water  and  brine. 

The  other  day  they  sent  a  12-pounder 
up  to  Caesar's  Camp  under  a  boy  who,  if 
he  were  not  commanding  big  men  round 
a  big  gun  in  a  big  war,  might  with  luck 
be  in  the  fifth  form. 

"  There's  a  94-pounder  up  there,"  said 
a  high  officer,  who  might  just  have  been 
his  grandfather. 

"  All  right,  sir,"  said  the  child  serenely, 
"  we'll  knock  him  out." 

He  hasn't  knocked  him  out  yet,  but  he 
is  going  to  next  shot,  which  in  a  siege  is 
the  next  best  thing. 

In  the  meantime  he  has  had  his  gun's 
name,  "  Lady  Ellen,"  neatly  carved  on  a 


IN  A  CONNING-TOWER.  1 55 

stone  and  put  up  on  his  emplacement. 
Another  gun-pit  bears  the  golden  legend 
"  Princess  Victoria  Battery,"  on  a  board, 
elegant  beyond  the  dreams  of  suburban 
preparatory  schools.  A  regiment  would 
have  had  no  paint  or  gold-leaf;  the  sailors 
always  have  everything.  They  carry 
their  home  with  them,  self-subsisting,  self- 
relying.  Even  as  the  constant  bluejacket 
says,  "  Right  Gun  Hill  up,  sir,"  there 
floats  from  below  ting-ting,  ting-ting, 
ting. 

Five  bells  ! 

The  rock-rending  double  bang  floats 
over  you  unheard  ;  the  hot  iron  hills  swim 
away. 

Five  bells — and  you  are  on  deck,  swish- 
ing through  cool  blue  water  among  white- 
clad  ladies  in  long  chairs,  going  home. 

O  Lord,  how  long  ? 

But  the  sailors  have  not  seen  home  for 
two  years,  which  is  two  less  than  their 
usual  spell.     This  is  their  holiday. 


156      FROM   CAPETOWN  TO   LADYSMITH. 

"  Of  course,  we  enjoy  it,"  they  say, 
almost  apologising  for  saving  us  ;  "we  so 
seldom  get  a  chance." 

The  Royal  Navy  is  the  salt  of  the  sea 
and  the  salt  of  the  earth  also. 


THE  LAST  CHAPTER. 

BY    VERNON    BLACKBURN. 

I  WILL  give  no  number  to  the  last 
chapter  of  George  Steevens'  story  of  the 
war.  There  is  no  reckoning  between  the 
work  from  his  and  the  work  from  this 
pen.  It  is  the  chapter  which  covers  a 
grave ;  it  does  not  make  a  completion. 
A  while  back,  you  have  read  that  sur- 
rendering wail  from  the  beleaguered 
city — a  wail  in  what  contrast  to  the 
humour,  the  vitality,  the  quickness,  the 
impulse,  the  eagerness  of  expectation 
with  which  his  toil  in  South  Africa 
began  ! — wherein  he  wrote  :  "  Beyond  is 
the  world — war  and  love.  Clery  march- 
ing on  Colenso,  and  all  that  a  man  holds 
dear  in  a  little  island  under  the  North 
Star.  .  .  .  To  your  world  and  to  yourself 
157 


158      FROM  CAPETOWN  TO  LADYSMITH. 

you  are  every  bit  as  good  as  dead — 
except  that  dead  men  have  no  time  to 
fill  in."  And  now  he  is  dead.  And  I 
have  undertaken  the  most  difficult  task, 
at  the  command — for  in  such  a  case  the 
timorous  suggestion,  hooped  round  by 
poignant  apologies,  is  no  less  than  a  com- 
mand— of  that  human  creature  whom,  in 
the  little  island  under  the  North  Star,  he 
held  most  dear  of  all,  his  wife,  to  set  a 
coping-stone,  a  mere  nothing  in  the  air, 
upon  the  last  work  that  came  from  his 
pen.  I  will  prefer  to  begin  with  my  own 
summary,  my  own  intimate  view  of 
George  Steevens,  as  he  wandered  in  and 
out,  visible  and  invisible,  of  the  paths  of 
my  life. 

"  Weep  for  the  dead,  for  his  light  hath 
failed  ;  weep  but  a  little  for  the  dead,  for 
he  is  at  rest."  Ecclesiasticus  came  to  my 
mind  when  the  news  of  his  death  came  to 
my  knowledge.  Who  would  not  weep 
over  the  extinction  of  a  career  set  in  a 


THE   LAST   CHAPTER.  1 59 

promise  so  golden,  in  an  accomplishment 
so  rare  and  splendid  ?  Sad  enough 
thought  it  is  that  he  is  at  rest ;  still — 
he  rests.  "Under  the  wide  and  starry 
sky,"  words  which,  as  I  have  heard  him 
say,  in  his  casual  unambitious  manner  of 
speech,  he  was  wont  to  repeat  to  himself 
in  the  open  deserts  of  the  Soudan — 
"  Under  the  wide  and  starry  sky,"  the 
grave  has  been  dug,  and  "  let  me  lie." 

'*  Glad  did  I  live,  and  gladly  die, 
And  I  laid  me  down  with  a  will." 

The  personality  of  George  Steevens 
was  one  which  might  have  been  complex 
and  obscure  to  the  ordinary  acquaintance, 
were  it  not  for  one  shining,  one  golden 
key  which  fitted  every  ward  of  his 
temperament,  his  conduct,  his  policy,  his 
work.  He  was  the  soul  of  honour.  I 
use  the  words  in  no  vague  sense,  in  no 
mere  spirit  of  phrase-making.  How 
could    that    be    possible    at    this    hour  ? 


l6o      FROM   CAPETOWN  TO   LADYSMITH. 

They  are  words  which  explain  him,  which 
are  the  commentary  of  his  life,  which 
summarise  and  enlighten  every  act  of 
every  day,  his  momentary  impulses  and 
his  acquired  habits.  "  In  Spain,"  a  great 
and  noble  writer  has  said,  "was  the  point 
put  upon  honour."  The  point  of  honour 
was  with  George  Steevens  his  helmet,  his 
shield,  his  armour,  his  flag.  That  it  was 
which  made  his  lightest  word  a  law,  his 
vaguest  promise  a  necessity  in  act,  his 
most  facile  acceptance  an  engagement  as 
fixed  as  the  laws  of  motion.  In  old,  old 
days  I  well  remember  how  it  came  to  be 
a  complacent  certainty  with  everybody 
associated  with  Steevens  that  if  he 
promised  an  article,  an  occasional  note,  a 
review — whatever  it  might  be — at  two, 
three,  four,  five  in  the  morning,  at  that 
hour  the  work  would  be  ready  ;  he  never 
flinched  ;  he  never  made  excuses,  for  the 
obvious  reason  that  there  was  never  any 
necessity   for    excuse.       Truthful,    clean- 


THE   LAST   CHAPTER.  lOI 

minded,  nobly  unselfish,  as  he  was,  all 
these  things  played  but  the  parts  of 
planets  revolving  around  the  sun  of  his 
life — the  sun  of  honour. 

To  that  point  I  always  return ;  but  a 
man  can  be  conceived  who  shall  be 
splendidly  honourable,  yet  not  lovable — 
a  man  who  might  repel  friendship. 
Steevens  was  not  of  that  race.  Not  a 
friend  of  his  but  loved  him  with  a  great 
and  serious  affection  for  those  qualities 
which  are  too  often  separable  from  the 
austerity  of  a  fine  character,  the  honour 
of  an  upright  man.  His  sweetness  was 
exquisite,  and  this  partly  because  it  was 
so  unexpected.  A  somewhat  shy  and 
quiet  manner  did  not  prepare  men  for  the 
urbanity,  the  tolerance,  the  magnanimity 
that  lay  at  the  back  of  his  heart.  Gener- 
osity in  thought — the  rarest  form  of 
generosity  that  is  reared  among  the 
flowers  of  this  sorrowful  earth — was  with 
him  habitual.     He   could,  and  did,  resent 


162       FROM   CAlPETOWN   TO   LADYSMITH. 

at  every  point  the  qualities  in  men  that 
ran  counter  to  his  principles  of  honour  ; 
and  he  did  not  spare  his  keen  irony  when 
such  things  crossed  his  path  ;  but,  on  the 
other  side,  he  loved  his  friends  with  a 
whole  and  simple  heart ;  I  think  that 
very  few  men  who  came  under  his  influ- 
ence refused  him  their  love,  none  their 
admiration. 

Into  all  that  he  wrote — and  I  shall  deal 
later  with  that  point  in  detail — his  true 
and  candid  spirit  was  infused.  Just  as  in 
his  life,  in  his  daily  actions,  you  were 
continually  surprised  by  his  tenderness 
turning  round  the  corner  of  his  austere 
reserve,  so  in  his  work  his  sentiment 
came  with  a  curious  appeal,  v.^ith  tender 
surprises,  with  an  emotion  that  was  all  the 
keener  on  account  of  the  contrast  that  it 
made  with  the  courage,  the  hope,  and  the 
fine  manliness  of  all  his  thought  and  all 
his  word.  Children,  helplessness  of  all 
kinds,  touched  always  that  merciful  heart 


THE   LAST   CHAPTER.  163 

I  can  scarcely  think  of  him  as  a  man  of 
the  world,  although  he  had  had  in  his  few 
and  glorious  days  experience  enough  to 
harden  the  spirit  of  any  man.  He  could 
never,  as  I  think  of  him,  have  grown  into 
your  swaggering,  money-making,  bargain- 
ing man  of  Universal  Trade.  Keen  and 
significant  his  policy,  his  ordering  of  his 
affairs  must  ever  have  been  ;  but  the 
keenness  and  significance  were  the  out- 
come, not  of  any  cool  eye  to  the  main 
chance,  but  of  a  gay  sense  of  the  pure 
need  of  logic,  not  only  in  letters,  but  also 
in  living. 

There,  again,  I  touch  another  charac- 
teristic— his  feeling  for  logic,  for  dia- 
lectic, which  made  him  one  of  the 
severest  reasoners  that  it  would  be  pos- 
sible to  meet  in  argument.  He  used,  in 
his  admirably  assumed  air  of  brag — an 
attitude  which  he  could  take  with  perfect 
humour  and  perfect  dignity — to  protest 
that  he  was  one  of  two  or  three  English- 


164       FROM   CAPETOWN   TO    LADYSMITH. 

men  who  had  ever  mastered  the  philo- 
sophical systems  of  Germany,  from  Kant 
to  Hegel,  from  Hegel  to  Schopenhauer. 
Though  he  said  it  with  an  exquisite 
sense  of  fun  and  almost  of  disparage- 
ment, I  am  strongly  inclined  to  believe 
that  it  was  true.  He  was  never  satisfied 
with  his  knowledge  ;  invariably  curious, 
he  was  guided  by  his  joy  in  pure  reason- 
ing to  the  philosophies  of  the  world,  and 
in  his  silent,  quiet,  unobtrusive  way  he 
became  a  master  of  many  subjects  which 
life  was  too  brief  in  his  case  to  permit 
him  to  show  to  his  friends,  much  less  to 
the  world. 

This,  it  will  be  readily  understood,  is, 
as  I  have  said,  the  merest  summary  of  a 
character,  as  one  person  has  understood 
it.  Others  will  reach  him  from  other 
points  of  view.  Meanwhile  Ladysmith 
has  him — what  is  that  phrase  of  his  ? — 
"you  squirm  between  iron  fingers." 
Fortunate  he,  so  far  that  he  is  at  rest, 


THE   LAST   CHAPTER.  165 

squirming  no  longer;  and  with  the  wail 
on  his  lips,  the  catch  in  the  throat,  he 
went  down  in  the  embrace  of  a  deadlier 
enemy  than  the  Bulwan  horror,  to  which 
he  made  reference  in  one  of  the  last 
lines  he  was  destined  to  write  in  this 
world.  He  fell  ill  in  that  pestilent  town, 
as  all  the  world  knows.  His  constitution 
was  strong  enough  ;  he  had  not  lived 
a  life  of  unpropitious  preparation  for  a 
serious  illness;  but  his  heart  was  a 
danger.  Typhoid  is  fatal  to  any  heart- 
weakness,  particularly  in  convalescence  ; 
and  he  was  caught  suddenly,  as  he  was 
growing  towards  perfect  health. 

I  have  been  privileged  to  see  certain 
letters  written  to  his  wife  by  the  friend 
with  whom  he  shared  his  Ladysmith 
house  during  the  course  of  his  illness. 
"  How  he  contracted  enteric  fever,"  says 
Mr.  Maud,  "  I  cannot  tell.  It  is  unfor- 
tunately very  prevalent  in  the  camp  just 
now.     He  began   to  be   ill   on   the  thir- 


l66      FROM   CAPETOWN  TO   LADYSMITH. 

teenth  of  December,  but  on  that  day  the 
doctor  was  not  quite  sure  about  its  being- 
enteric,  although  he  at  once  commenced 
with  the  treatment  for  that  disease. 
The  following  day  there  was  no  doubt 
about  it,  and  we  moved  him  from  our 
noisy  and  uncomfortable  quarters  in  the 
Imperial  Light  Horse  Camp  to  our 
present  abode,  which  is  quite  the  best 
house  in  Ladysmith.  Major  Henderson 
of  the  Intelligence  Department  very 
kindly  offered  his  own  room,  a  fine,  airy, 
and  well-furnished  apartment,  although 
he  was  barely  recovered  of  his  wound. 
At  first  I  could  only  procure  the  services 
of  a  trained  orderly  of  the  5th  Dragoon 
Guards  lent  to  us  by  the  Colonel,  but  a 
few  days  later  we  were  lucky  enough  to 
find  a  lady  nurse  who  has  turned  out 
most  excellently,  and  she  takes  charge  at 
night.  ...  I  am  happy  to  tell  you  that 
everything  has  gone  on  splendidl}'.  .  .  ." 
After  describing  how  the  fever  gradually 


THE  LAST  CHAPTER.  1 67 

approached  a  crisis,  Mr.  Maud  continues : 
"  When  he  was  at  his  worst  he  was  often 
deHrious,  but  never  violent ;  the  only 
trouble  was  to  prevent  him  getting  out 
of  bed.  He  was  continually  asking 
us  to  go  and  fetch  you,  and  always 
thought  he  was  journeying  homewards. 
It  never  does  to  halloa  before  one  gets 
out  of  the  wood,  but  I  do  really  think 
that  he  is  well  on  the  road  to  recovery." 
Alas! 

Not  so  much  as  a  continued  record  of 
Steevens'  illness,  as  in  the  nature  of  a 
pathetic  side-issue  to  the  tragedy  of  his 
death,  I  subjoin  one  or  two  passages 
from  a  letter  sent  subsequently  from 
Ladysmith  by  the  same  faithful  friend 
before  the  end.  "  He  has  withstood 
the  storm  wonderfully  well,  and  he  is  not 
very  much  pulled  down.  The  doctor 
thinks  that  he  should  be  about  again  in  a 
fortnight," — the  letter  was  written  on  the 
fourth   of   January, — "  by  which    time    I 


1 68   FROM  CAPETOWN  TO  LADYSMITH. 

trust  General  Buller  will  have  arrived 
and  reopened  the  railway.  Directly  it  is 
possible  to  move,  I  shall  take  him  down 
to  Nottingham-road.  .  .  .  There  has 
been  little  or  nothing  to  do  for  the  last 
month  beyond  listening  to  the  bursting 
of  the  Long  Tom  shells."  That  touch 
about  General  Buller's  arrival  is  surely 
one  of  the  most  strangely  appealing 
incidents  in  the  whole  history  of  human 
confidence  and  human  expectation ! 
Another  friend,  Mr.  George  Lynch, 
whose  name  occurs  in  the  preceding 
pages,  in  a  passage  curiously  charac- 
teristic of  Steevens'  drily  incisive  hu- 
mour writes  about  the  days  that  must 
have  immediately  preceded  his  illness  : 
"  He  was  as  fit  and  well  as  possible 
when  I  left  Ladysmith  last  month." 
(The  letter  is  dated  from  Durban,  Janu- 
ary II.)  "  We  were  drawing  rations  like 
the  soldiers,  but  had  some  '74  port  and  a 
plum-pudding  which  we  were  keeping  for 


THE   LAST   CHAPTER.  169 

Christmas  day.  .  .  .  Shells  fell  in  our 
vicinity  more  or  less  like  angels'  visits, 
and  I  had  a  bet  with  him  of  a  dinner — I 
backed  our  house  to  be  hit  against 
another  which  he  selected  ;  and  he  won. 
I  am  to  pay  the  dinner  at  the  Savoy 
when  we  return." 

There  is  little  more  to  record  of  the 
actual  facts  at  this  moment.  The  fol- 
lowing cable,  which  has  till  now  re- 
mained unpublished,  tells  its  own  tale 
too  sadly  : 

"  Steevens  a  few  days  before  death  had  recov- 
ered so  far  as  to  be  able  to  attend  to  some  of  his 
journalistic  duties  though  still  confined  to  bed. 
Relapse  followed;  he  died  at  five  in  the  after- 
noon. Funeral  same  night,  leaving  Carter's 
house  (where  Steevens  was  lying  during  illness) 
at  eleven  thirty.  Interred  in  Ladysmith  Ceme- 
tery at  midnight.  Night  dismal,  rain  falling, 
while  the  moon  attempted  to  pierce  the  black 
clouds.  Boer  searchlight  from  Umbalaa  flashed 
over  the  funeral  party,  showing  the  way  in  the 
darkness.  Large  attendance  of  mourners,  sev- 
eral officers,  garrison,  most  correspondents. 
Chaplain  McVarish  officiated." 


I/O      FROM   CAPETOWN   TO   LADYSMITH. 

When  I  read  that  short  and  simple 
cablegram,  the  thought  came  to  my  mind 
that  if  only  the  greater  number  of 
modern  rioters  in  language  were  com- 
pelled to  hoard  their  words  out  of  sheer 
necessity  for  the  cable,  we  should  have 
better  results  from  the  attempts  at  word- 
painting  that  now  cumber  the  ground  : 
And  this  brings  me  directly  to  a  con- 
sideration of  Steevens'  work.  In  many 
respects,  of  course,  it  was  never,  even  in 
separate  papers,  completed.  Journalist 
and  scholar  he  was,  both.  But  the 
world  was  allowed  to  see  too  much  of 
the  Journalist,  too  little  of  the  Scholar  in 
what  he  accomplished.  "The  Mono- 
logues of  the  Dead "  was  a  brilliant 
beginning.  It  proved  the  splendid  work 
of  the  past,  it  presaged  more  splendid 
work  for  the  future.  And  then,  if  you 
please,  he  became  a  man  of  action  ;  and 
a  man  of  action,  if  he  is  to  write,  must 
perforce   be  a  journalist.     The   prepara- 


THE  LAST   CHAPTER.  I^I 

tions  had  made  it  impossible  that  he 
should  ever  be  anything  else  but  an 
extraordinary  journalist  ;  and  accord- 
ingly it  fell  out  that  the  combination  of 
a  wonderful  equipment  of  scholarship 
with  a  vigorous  sense  of  vitality  brought 
about  a  unique  thing  in  modern  journal- 
ism. Unique,  I  say  ;  the  thing  may  be 
done  again,  it  is  true ;  but  he  was  the 
pioneer,  he  was  the  inventor  of  the  par- 
ticular method  which  he  practised. 

I  began  this  discussion  with  a  refer- 
ence to  the  spare,  austere,  but  quite 
lucid  message  of  the  cablegram  annount 
ing  the  death  of  Steevens ;  and  I  wiis 
carried  on  at  once  to  a  deliberate  con- 
sideration of  his  literary  work,  because 
that  work  had,  despite  its  vigour,  its 
vividness,  its  brilliance,  put  the  outline, 
the  sparseness,  the  slimness,  the  auster- 
ity which  are  so  painfully  inconspicuous 
in  the  custoniar\'  painter  of  word-pic- 
tures.    Some    have    said    that    Steevens 


172       FROM   CAPETOWN  TO   LADYSMITH. 

was  destined  to  be  the  Kingrlake  of  the 
Transvaal.  That  is  patently  inde- 
monstrable. His  war  correspondence 
was  not  the  work  of  a  stately  historian. 
He  could,  out  of  sheer  imaginativeness, 
create  for  himself  the  style  of  the  stately 
historian.  His  "  New  Gibbon  " — a  paper 
which  appeared  in  Blackwood's  —  is 
there  to  prove  so  much  ;  but  that  was 
not  the  manner  in  which  he  usually 
wrote  about  the  war.  He  was  essen- 
tially a  man  who  had  visions  of  things. 
Without  the  time  to  separate  his  visions 
into  the  language  of  pure  classicism, — a 
feat  which  Tennyson  assuredly  contrived 
to  accomplish, — he  yet  took  out  the  right 
details  and  by  skilful  combination  built 
you,  in  the  briefest  possible  space,  a 
strongly  vivid  picture.  If  you  look 
straight  out  at  any  scene,  you  will  see 
what  all  men  see  when  they  look  straight 
out ;  but  when  you  enquire  curiously 
into  all  tlie  quarters  of  the  compass,  you 


THE   LAST   CHAPTER.  1 73 

will  see  what  no  man  ever  saw  when  he 
simply  looked  out  of  his  two  eyes  with- 
out regarding  the  here,  there,  and  every- 
where. 

When  Tennyson  wrote  of 

.    .    .  flush'd  Ganymede,  his  rosy  thigh 
Half-buried  in  the  Eagle's  down, 
Sole  as  a  flying  star  shot  thro'  the  sky 
Above  the  pillar'd  town, 

you  felt  the  wonder  of  the  picture. 
Applied  in  a  vastly  different  way,  put  to 
vastly  different  uses,  the  visual  gift  of 
Steevens   belonsfed    to    the    same    order 

0 

of  things.  Consider  this  passage  from 
his  Sudan  book : 

"  Black  spindle-legs  curled  up  to  meet 
red-gimleted  black  faces,  donkeys  head- 
less and  legless,  or  sieves  of  shrapnel, 
camels  with  necks  writhed  back  on  to 
their  humps,  rotting  already  in  pools  of 
blood  and  bile-yellow  water,  heads  with- 
out faces,  and  faces  without  anything 
below,    cobwebbed   arms   and    legs,   and 


174      FROM   CAPETOWN  TO   LADYSMITH, 

black     skins     grilled     to     crackling     on 
smouldering  palm-leaf — don't  look  at  it." 

The  writer  swinging  on  at  the  obvious 
pace  with  which  this  writing  swings  of 
course  has  no  chance  to  make  as  flawless 
a  picture  as  the  great  man  of  leisure  ;  but 
the  pictorial  quality  of  each  is  precisely 
the  same. 

I  have  sometimes  wondered  if  I 
grudged  to  journalism  what  Steevens 
stole  from  letters.  I  have  not  yet  quite 
come  to  a  decision  ;  for  had  he  never 
left  the  groves  of  the  Academic  for  the 
crowded  career  of  the  man  of  the  world 
we  should  never  have  known  his  amazing 
versatility,  or  even  a  fraction  of  his  noble 
character  as  it  was  published  to  the 
world.  Certainly  the  book  to  which  this 
chapter  forms  a  mere  pendant  must,  in 
parts,  stand  as  a  new  revelation  no  less 
of  the  nobility  of  that  character  than  of 
his  extraordinary  foresight,  his  wonder- 
ful instinct  for  the  objectiveness  of  life. 


THE    LAST  CHAPTER.  175 

I  believe  that  in  his  earHest  childhood 
his  feeling  for  the  prose  of  geography 
was  like  Wordsworth's  cataract — it 
"haunted  him  like  a  passion."  And  all 
the  while  the  subjective  side  of  life  called 
for  the  intrusion  of  his  prying  eyes.  So 
that  you  may  say  that  it  was  more  or 
less  pure  chance  that  led  him  to  give 
what  has  proved  to  be  the  bulk  of  his 
active  years  to  the  objective  side  of 
things,  the  purely  actual.  Take,  in  this 
very  book,  that  which  amounts  practically 
to  a  prophesy  of  the  difficulty  of  captur- 
ing a  point  like  Spion  Kop,  in  the 
passage  where  he  describes  how  impos- 
sible it  is  to  judge  of  the  value  of  a  hill 
top  until  you  get  there.  (Pope,  by  the 
way,  and  I  state  the  point,  not  from  any 
desire  to  be  pedantic,  but  because 
Steevens  had  a  classical  way  with  him 
which  would  out,  disguise  it  how  he 
might — Pope,  I  say,  in  his  Essay  on 
Criticism,    had   before    made   the    same 


176      FROM   CAPETOWN  TO   LADYSMITH. 

remark.)  Then  again  you  have  in  his 
chapter  on  Aliwal  the  curiously  intimate 
sketch  of  the  Boer  character — "  a  people 
hard  to  arouse,  but,  you  would  say,  very 
hard  to  subdue."  Well,  it  is  by  the 
objective  side  of  life  that  we  have  to 
judge  him.  The  futility  of  death  makes 
that  an  absolute  necessity,  but  I  like  to 
think  of  a  possible  George  Steevens  who, 
when  the  dust  and  sand  of  campaigns  and 
daily  journalism  had  been  wiped  away 
from  his  shoon,  would  have  combined 
in  a  great  and  single-hearted  career  all 
the  various  powers  of  his  fine  mind. 

His  death,  as  none  needs  to  be  told, 
came  as  a  g-reat  shock  and  with  almost 
staggering  surprise  to  the  world ;  and  it 
is  for  his  memory's  sake  that  I  put  on 
record  a  few  of  the  words  that  were 
written  of  him  by  responsible  people. 
An  Oxford  contemporary  has  written  of 
him  : 

"  I  first  met  him  at  a  meeting  of  th^ 


THE   LAST  CHAPTER.  I77 

Russell  Club,  at  Oxford.  He  was  a 
great  light  there,  being  hon.  sec.  It  was 
in  1890,  and  Steevens  had  been  head  boy 
of  the  City  of  London  School,  and  then 
Senior  Scholar  at  Balliol.  Even  at  the 
Russell  Club,  then,  he  was  regarded  as 
a  great  man.  The  membership  was, 
I  think,  limited  to  twenty — all  Radical 
stalwarts.  I  well  remember  his  witty 
comments  on  a  paper  advocating 
Women's  Rights.  He  was  at  his  best 
when  opening  the  debate  after  some 
such  paper.  Little  did  that  band  of 
ardent  souls  imagine  their  leader  would, 
in  a  few  short  years,  be  winning  fame  for 
a  Tory  half-penny  paper. 

"  He  sat  next  me,  at  dinner,  just 
before  he  graduated,  and  he  was  in  one 
of  those  pensive  moods  which  sometimes 
came  over  him.  I  believe  he  hardly 
spoke.  In  '92  he  entered  himself  as  a 
candidate  for  a  Fellowship  at  Pembroke. 
I  recollect  his   dropping   into  the  exami- 


178       FROM    CAPETOWN   TO   LADYSMITH. 

nation  room  half  an  hour  late,  while  all 
the  rest  had  been  eagerly  waiting  outside 
the  doors  to  start  their  papers  at  once. 
But  what  odds  ?  He  was  miles  ahead  of 
them  all — an  easy  first  It  was  rumoured 
in  Pembroke  that  the  new  Fellow  had 
been  seen  smoking  (a  pipe,  too),  in  the 
quad — that  the  Dean  had  said  it  was 
really  shocking,  such  a  bad  example  to 
the  undergraduates,  and  against  all 
College  rules ;  how  could  we  expect 
undergraduates  to  be  moral  if  Mr. 
Steevens  did  such  things  ?  How, 
indeed?  Then  came  Mr.  Oscar  Brown- 
ing, from  Cambridge,  and  carried  off 
Steevens  to  'the  second  University  in 
the  Kingdom,'  so  that  we  saw  but  little 
of  him.  Some  worshipped,  others  de- 
nounced him.  The  Cambridge  papers 
took  sides.  One  spoke  of  '  The 
Shadow '  or  '  The  Fetish,'  au  contraire; 
another  would  praise  the  great  Oxford 
genius.     Whereas    at    Balliol    Steevens 


THE   LAST   CHAPTER.  1 79 

was   boldly   criticised,   at  Cambridge  he 
was  hated  or  adored. 

"  A  few  initiated  friends  knew  that 
Steevens  was  writing  for  the  '  Pall  Mall ' 
and  the  '  Cambridge  Observer,'  and  it  soon 
became  evident  that  journalism  was  to  be 
his  life-work.  Last  February  I  met  him 
in  the  Strand,  and  he  was  much  changed  ; 
no  more  crush  hat,  and  long  hair,  and 
Bohemian  manners.  He  was  back  from 
the  East,  and  a  great  man  now, — married 
and  settled  as  well, — very  spruce,  and  in- 
clined to  be  enthusiastic  about  the  Em- 
pire. But  still  I  remarked  his  old 
indifference  to  criticism.  Success  had 
improved  him  in  every  way  :  this  seems  a 
common  thing  with  Britishers.  In  Sep- 
tember last  I  knocked  up  against  him  at 
Rennes  during  the  Dreyfus  trial.  As  I 
expected,  Steevens  kept  cool ;  he  could 
always  see  the  other  side  of  a  question. 
We  discussed  the  impending  war,  and  he 
was   eagerly    looking    forward   to   going 


l80      FROM   CAPETOWN   TO   LADYSMITH. 

with  the  troops.  I  dare  not  tell  his  views 
on  the  political  question  of  the  war. 
They  would  surprise  most  of  his  friends 
and  admirers.  On  taking  leave  I  bade 
him  be  sure  to  take  care  of  himself — he 
said  he  would." 

What  strikes  me  as  being  peculiarly 
significant  of  a  certain  aspect  of  his 
character  appeared  In  "The  Nursing  and 
Hospital  World."  It  ran  in  this  wise — I 
give  merely  an  extract : 

"  Although  George  Steevens  never 
used  his  imperial  pen  for  personal  pur- 
poses, yet  it  seems  almost  as  if  it  were  a 
premonition  of  death  by  enteric  fever 
which  aroused  his  intense  sympathy  for 
our  brave  soldiers  who  died  like  flies  in 
the  Soudan  from  this  terrible  scourge, 
owing  to  lack  of  trained  nursing  skill, 
during  the  late  war.  This  sympathy  he 
expressed  to  those  in  power,  and  we  be- 
lieve that  it  was  owing  to  his  representa- 
tions that  one  of  the  most  splendid  offers 


THE   LAST   CHAPTER.  l8l 

of  help  for  our  soldiers  ever  suggested  was 
made  by  his  chief,  the  editor  of  the  '  Daily- 
Mail,'  when  he  proposed  to  equip,  regard- 
less of  expense,  an  ambulance  to  the 
Soudan,  organized  on  lines  which  would 
secure,  for  our  sick  and  wounded,  skilled 
nursing  on  modern  lines,  such  nursing  as 
the  system  in  vogue  at  the  War  Office 
denies  to  them. 

"  The  fact  that  the  War  Office  refused 
this  enlightened  and  generous  offer,  and 
that  dozens  of  valuable  lives  were  sacri- 
ficed in  consequence,  is  only  part  of  the 
monstrous  incompetence  of  its  manage- 
ment. Who  can  tell !  If  Mr.  Alfred 
Harmsworth's  offer  had  been  accepted  in 
the  last  war,  might  not  army  nursing  re- 
form have,  to  a  certain  extent,been  effected 
ere  we  came  to  blows  with  the  Transvaal, 
and  many  of  the  brave  men  who  have 
died  for  us  long  lingering  deaths  from 
enteric  and  dysentery  have  been  spared  to 
those  of  whom  they  are  beloved  .-* " 


l82       FROM   CAPETOWN  TO   LADYSMITH. 

Another  writer  in  "The  Outlook:" 
"  As  we  turn  over  the  astonishing 
record  of  George  Warrington  Steevens' 
thirty  years,  we  are  divided  between  the 
balance  of  loss  and  gain.  The  loss  to 
his  own  intimates  must  be  intolerable. 
From  that,  indeed,  we  somewhat  hastily 
avert  our  eyes.  Remains  the  loss  to  the 
great  reading  public,  which  we  believe 
that  Steevens  must  have  done  a  vast  deal 
to  educate,  not  to  literature  so  much  as 
to  a  pride  in  our  country's  Imperial  des- 
tiny. Where  the  elect  chiefly  admired  a 
scarcely  exampled  grasp  and  power  of 
literary  impressionism,  the  man  in  the 
street  was  learning  the  scope  and  aspect 
of  his  and  our  Imperial  heritage,  and 
gaining  a  new  view  of  his  duties  as  a 
British  citizen. 

"A  potent  influence  is  thus  withdrawn. 
The  pen  that  had  taught  us  to  see  and 
comprehend  India  and  Egypt  and  the  re- 
conquest    of    the    Soudan    would    have 


THE   LAST   CHAPTER.  1 83 

burned  in  on  the  most  heedless  the  line 
which  duty  marks  out  for  us  in  South 
Africa.  Men  who  know  South  Africa 
are  pretty  well  united.  Now  Steevens 
would  have  taken  all  England  to  South 
Africa.  Nay,  more,  we  are  no  longer 
able  to  blink  the  truth  that  all  is  not  for 
the  best  in  the  best  of  all  possible  armies, 
and  the  one  satisfaction  in  our  reverses  is 
that,  when  the  war  is  over,  no  Government 
will  dare  to  resist  a  vigorous  programme 
of  reform.  Steevens  would  not  have 
been  too  technical  for  his  readers ;  he 
would  have  given  his  huge  public  just  as 
many  prominent  facts  and  headings  as 
had  been  good  for  them,  and  his  return 
from  South  Africa  with  the  materials  of 
a  book  must  have  strengthened  the  hands 
of  the  intelligent  reformer.  That  jour- 
nalism which,  in  a  word,  really  is  the  liv- 
ing influence  in  the  state  is  infinitely  the 
poorer.  And  so  we  believe  is  literature. 
There  is  much  literature  in  his  journalism, 


1 84   FROM  CAPETOWN  TO  LADYSMITH. 

but  it  is  in  his  '  Monologues  of  the  Dead' 
that  you  get  the  rare  achievement  and 
rarer  promise  which  made  one  positive 
that,  his  wanderings  once  over,  he  would 
settle  down  to  write  something  of  great 
and  permanent  value.  Only  one  impedi- 
ment could  we  have  foreseen  to  such  a 
consummation ;  he  might  have  been 
drawn  into  public  life.  For  he  spoke 
far  better  than  the  majority  of  even  dis- 
tinguished contemporary  politicians,  and 
to  a  man  of  his  knowledge  of  affairs,  in- 
fluence over  others,  and  clearness  of  con- 
viction anything  might  have  been  open." 
Well !  he  is  dead  at  Ladysmith  of  en- 
teric fever.  Turning  over  the  pages  of 
his  famous  war-book,  we  find  it  written  of 
the  Soudan  :  "  Of  the  men  who  escaped 
with  their  lives,  hundreds  more  will  bear 
the  mark  of  its  fangs  till  they  die  ;  hardly 
one  of  them  but  will  die  the  sooner  for 
the  Soudan."  And  so  he  is  dead  "  the 
sooner  for  the  Soudan."     It  seems  bitter, 


THE   LAST  CHAPTER.  185 

unjust,  a  quite  superfluous  dispensation  ; 
and  then  one's  eye  falls  on  the  next  sen- 
tence :  "  What  have  we  to  show  in  re- 
turn?" In  the  answer  is  set  forth  the 
balance  of  gain,  for  we  love  "  to  show  in 
return  "  a  well-nigh  ideal  career.  Fame, 
happiness,  friendship,  and  that  which 
transcends  friendship,  all  came  to  George 
Steevens  before  he  was  thirty.  He  did 
everything,  and  everything  well.  He 
bridged  a  gulf  which  was  deemed  impass- 
able, for  from  being  a  head  boy  at  school 
and  the  youngest  Balliol  scholar  and  a 
Fellow  of  his  College  and  the  very  type 
of  rising  pedagogue,  with  a  career  secure 
to  him  in  these  dusty  meadows,  he  chose 
to  step  forth  into  a  world  where  these 
things  were  accounted  lightly,  to  glorify 
the  hitherto  contemned  office  of  the  re- 
porter. Thus  within  a  few  years  he  hur- 
ried through  America,  bringing  back,  the 
greatest  of  living  American  journalists 
tells  us,  the  best  and  most  accurate  of  all 


1 86   FROM  CAPETOWN  TO  LADYSMITH. 

pictures  of  America.  Thus  he  saw  the 
face  of  war  with  the  conquering  Turk  in 
Th6ssaly,  and  showed  us  modern  Ger- 
many and  Egypt  and  British  India,  and 
in  two  Soudanese  campaigns  rode  for 
days  in  the  saddle  in  "  that  God-accursed 
wilderness,"  as  though  his  training  had 
been  in  a  stable,  not  in  the  quad  at  Balliol. 
These  thirty  years  were  packed  with  the 
happiness  and  success  which  Matthew 
Arnold  desired  for  them  that  must  die 
young.  He  not  only  succeeded,  but  he 
took  success  modestl}^  and  leaves  a  name 
for  unselfishness  and  unbumptiousness. 
Also  he  "  did  the  state  some  service." 

"One paces  up  and  down  the  shore  yet 
awhile,"  says  Thackeray,  "and  looks  to- 
wards the  unknown  ocean  and  thinks  of 
the  traveller  whose  boat  sailed  yesterday." 
And  so,  thinking  of  Steevens,  we  must 
not  altogether  repine  when,  "  trailing 
clouds  of  glory,"  an  "  ample,  full-blooded 
spirit  shoots  into  the  night." 


THE   LAST  CHAPTER.  1 87 

I  take  this  passage  from  "  Literature" 
in  connection  with  Steevenson  account  of 
the  grave  moral  which  it  draws  from  his 
life-work : 

"  His  careerwas  an  object-lesson  in  the 
usefulness  of  those  educational  endow- 
ments which  link  the  humblest  with  the 
highest  seats  of  learning  in  the  country. 
If  he  had  not  been  able  to  win  scholar- 
ships he  would  have  had  to  begin  life  as  a 
clerk  in  a  bank  or  a  house  of  business.  But 
he  won  them,  and  a  good  education  with 
them,  wherever  they  were  to  be  won — at 
the  City  of  London  School,  and  at  Balliol 
College,  Oxford.  He  was  a  first-class 
man  (both  in  'Mods'  and  'Greats'), 
proxime  accessit  for  the  Hertford,  and  a 
Fellow  of  Pembroke.  He  learnt  German, 
and  specialised  in  metaphysics.  A  re- 
view which  he  wrote  of  Mr.  Balfour's 
'  Foundations  of  Religious  Belief  showed 
how  much  more  deeply  than  the  aver- 
age journalist  he  had  studied  the  subjects 


l88       FROM   CAPETOWN  TO   LADYSMITH. 

about  which  philosophers  doubt ;  and  his 
first  book — 'Monologues  of  the  Dead' 
— established  his  claim  to  scholarship. 
Some  critics  called  them  vulgar ;  and  they 
certainly  were  frivolous.  But  they  proved 
two  things — that  Mr.  Steevens  had  a 
lively  sense  of  humour,  and  that  he  had 
read  the  classics  to  some  purpose.  The 
monologue  of  Xantippe — in  which  she 
gave  her  candid  opinion  of  Socrates — 
was,  in  its  way,  and  within  its  limits,  a 
masterpiece. 

"  But  it  was  not  by  this  sort  of  work 
that  Mr.  Steevens  was  to  win  his  wide 
popularity  ;  few  writers,  when  one  comes 
to  think  of  it,  do  win  wide  popularity 
by  means  of  clsissicsiijeux  d'esprz^.  At 
the  time  when  he  was  throwing  them  off, 
he  was  also  throwing  off  '  Occ.  Notes ' 
for  the  '  Pall  Mall  Gazette.'  He  was 
reckoned  the  humorist  J^ar  excellence 
of  that  journal  in  the  years  when, 
under  the  editorship   of  Mr.  Cust,  it  was 


THE  LAST  CHAPTER.  1 89 

almost  entirely  written  by  humorists.  He 
was  one  of  the  seceders  on  the  occasion 
of  Mr.  Cust's  retirement,  and  occupied 
the  leisure  that  then  presented  itself  in 
writing  his  book  on  '  Naval  Policy.* 
His  real  chance  in  life  came  when  he  was 
sent  to  America  for  the  '  Daily  Mail.'  It 
was  a  better  chance  than  it  might  have 
been,  because  that  newspaper  did  not 
publish  his  letters  at  irregular  intervals,  as 
usually  happens,  but  in  an  unbroken  daily 
sequence.  Other  excursions  followed — 
to  Egypt,  to  India,  to  Turkey,  to  Ger- 
many, to  Rennes,  to  the  Soudan — and 
the  letters,  in  almost  every  case,  quickly 
reappeared  as  a  book. 

"  A  rare  combination  of  gifts  con- 
tributed to  Mr.  Steevens'  success.  To 
begin  with,  he  had  a  wonderful  power  of 
finding  his  way  quickly  through  a  tangle 
of  complicated  detail — this  he  owed,  no 
doubt,  in  large  measure,  to  his  Oxford 
training.     He   also  was  one  of   the  few 


190       FROM   CAPETOWN   TO    LADYSMITH. 

writers  who  have  brought  to  journalism 
the  talents,  and  sympathies,  and  touch 
hitherto  regarded  as  belonging  more 
properly  to  the  writer  of  fiction.  It  was 
the  dream  of  Mr.  T.  P.  O'Connor,  when 
he  started  the  '  Sun,'  to  have  the  happen- 
ings of  the  passing  day  described  in  the 
style  of  the  short  story  writer.  The 
experiment  failed,  because  it  was  tried 
on  an  evening  paper,  with  printers  clam- 
ouring for  copy,  and  the  beginning  of  the 
story  generally  had  to  be  written  before 
the  end  of  the  story  was  in  sight,  or  the 
place  of  the  event  could  be  determined. 
Mr.  Steevens  tried  the  same  experiment, 
under  more  favourable  conditions,  and 
succeeded.  There  never  were  news- 
paper articles  that  read  more  like  short 
stories  than  his ;  and,  at  the  same  time, 
there  never  were  newspaper  articles  that 
gave  a  more  convincing  impression  that 
the  thing  happened  as  the  writer  de- 
scribed it." 


THE    LAST   CHAPTER.  I9I 

A  more  personal  note  was  struck  per- 
haps by  a  writer  in  "  The  Morning  Post :  " 

"  Few  of  the  reading  public  can  fail 
to  be  acquainted  with  the  merits  of  his 
purely  journalistic  work.  He  had  care- 
fully developed  a  great  natural  gift  of 
observation,  until  it  seemed  well-nigh  an 
impossibility  that  he  should  miss  any 
important  detail,  however  small,  in  a 
scene  which  he  was  watching.  More- 
over, he  had  a  marvellous  power  of  vivid 
expression,  and  used  it  with  such  a  skill 
that  even  the  dullest  of  readers  could 
hardly  fail  to  see  what  he  wished  them 
to  see.  It  is  given  to  some  journalists 
to  wield  great  influence,  and  few  have 
done  more  to  spread  the  Imperial  idea 
than  has  been  done  by  Mr.  Steevens 
during  the  last  four  or  five  years  of  his 
brief  life.  Still,  it  must  be  remembered 
that  in  order  to  follow  journalism  suc- 
cessfully, he  had  to  make  sacrifices  which 
he  undoubtedly   felt  to  be  heavy.     His 


192       FROM   CAPETOWN   TO    LADYSMITH. 

little  book,  '  Monologues  of  the  Dead,' 
can  never  become  popular,  since  it  needs 
for  its  appreciation  an  amount  of  scholar- 
ship which  comparatively  few  possess. 
Yet  it  proves  none  the  less  conclusively 
that,  had  he  lived  and  had  leisure,  he 
would  have  accomplished  great  things  in 
literature.  Those  who  had  the  privilege 
of  knowing  him,  however,  and,  above  all, 
those  who  at  one  period  or  another  in 
his  career  worked  side  by  side  with  him, 
will  think  but  little  now  of  his  success  as 
journalist  and  author.  The  people  who 
may  have  tried  as  they  read  his  almost 
aggressively  brilliant  articles  to  divine 
something  of  the  personality  behind 
them  can  scarcely  have  contrived  to  pic- 
ture him  accurately.  They  will  not  im- 
agine the  silent,  undemonstrative  person, 
invariably  kind,  and  ready  unasked  to 
do  a  colleague's  work  in  addition  to  his 
own,  who  dwells  in  the  memory  of  the 
friends  of  Mr.  Steevens.     They  will  not 


THE   LAST  CHAPTER.  I93 

understand  how  entirely  natural  it 
seemed  to  these  friends  that  when  the 
long  day's  work  was  ended  in  Ladysmith 
he  should  have  gone  habitually,  until 
this  illness  struck  him  down,  to  labour 
among  the  sick  and  wounded  for  their 
amusement,  and  in  order  to  give  them 
the  courage  which  is  as  necessary  to  the 
soldier  facing  disease  as  it  is  to  his  col- 
league who  has  to  storm  a  difficult 
position.  Those  who  loved  him  will 
presently  find  some  consolation  in  con- 
sidering the  greatness  of  his  achieve- 
ment, but  nothing  that  can  now  be  said 
will  mitigate  their  grief  at  his  untimely 
loss." 

Another  writer  says : 

"  What  Mr.  Kipling  has  done  for  fic- 
tion Mr.  Steevens  did  for  fact.  He  was 
a  priest  of  the  Imperialist  idea,  and  the 
glory  of  Empire  was  ever  uppermost  in 
his  writings.  That  alone  would  not 
have  brought  him  the  position  he  held, 


194      FROM   CAPETOWN  TO   LADYSMITH. 

for  it  was  part  of  the  age  he  lived  in. 
But  he  was  endowed  with  a  curious 
faculty,  an  extraordinary  gift  for  record- 
ing his  impressions.  In  a  scientific  age 
his  style  may  be  described  as  cinemato- 
graphic. He  was  able  to  put  vividly 
before  his  readers,  in  a  series  of  smooth- 
running  little  pictures,  events  exactly  as 
he  saw  them  with  his  own  intense  eyes. 
It  has  been  said  that  on  occasion  his  work 
contained  passages  a  purist  would  not 
have  passed.  But  Mr.  Steevens  wrote 
for  the  people,  and  he  knew  it.  Deliber- 
ately and  by  consummate  skill  he  wrote 
in  the  words  of  his  average  reader ;  and 
had  he  desired  to  offer  his  work  for  the 
consideration  of  a  more  select  class  there 
is  little  doubt  that  he  would  have  dis- 
played the  same  felicity.  His  mission 
was  not  of  that  order.  He  set  himself 
the  more  difficult  task  of  entertaining 
the  many ;  and  the  same  thoroughness 
which   made   him  captain  of  the   school, 


THE   LAST   CHAPTER.  I95 

Balliol  scholar,  and  the  best  note  writer  on 
the  'Pall  Mall  Gazette'  in  its  brightest 
days,  taught  him,  aided  by  natural  gifts, 
to  write  *  With  Kitchener  to  Khartum ' 
and  his  marvellous  impressions  of  travel." 
This  record  must  close.  Innumerable 
have  been  the  tributes  to  this  brave 
youth's  power  for  capturing  the  humnn 
heart  and  the  human  mind.  The  states- 
man and  the  working-man — one  of  these 
has  written  very  curtly  and  simply,  "He 
served  us  best  of  all."  Lord  Roberts 
also  cabled  from  Capetown  in  the  follow- 
ing words  :  "  Deeply  regret  death  of  your 
talented  correspondent,  Steevens.  Rob- 
erts"; and  a  correspondent  writes: 
"  To-day  I  called  on  Lord  Kitchener,  in 
compliance  with  his  request,  having 
yesterday  received  through  his  aide- 
de-camp.  Major  Watson,  the  following 
letter :  '  I  am  anxious  to  have  an  oppor- 
tunity of  expressing  to  you  personally 
my  great  regret  at  the  loss  we  have  all 


196      FROM   CAPETOWN   TO   LADYSMITH. 

sustained  in  the  death  of  Mr.  Steevens.* 
Lord  Kitchener  said  to  me :  *  I  was 
anxious  to  tell  you  how  very  sorry  I 
was  to  hear  of  the  death  of  Mr.  Steevens. 
He  was  with  me  in  the  Soudan,  and,  of 
course,  I  saw  a  great  deal  of  him  and 
knew  him  well.  He  was  such  a  clever 
and  able  man.  He  did  his  work  as 
correspondent  so  brilliantly,  and  he 
never  gave  the  slightest  trouble — I  wish 
all  correspondents  were  like  him.  I  sup- 
pose they  will  try  to  follow  in  his  foot- 
steps. I  am  sure  I  hope  they  will.  He 
was  a  model  correspondent,  the  best  I 
have  ever  known,  and  I  should  like  you 
to  say  how  greatly  grieved  I  am  at  his 
death.'  "  Each  has  felt  something  of  the 
intimate  spirit  of  his  work.  Some  "  In 
Memoriam "  verses,  very  beautifully 
written  for  "The  Morning  Post,"  may, 
however,  claim  a  passing  attention :  , 

The  pages  of  the  Book  quickly  he  turned. 
He  saw  the  languid  Isis  in  a  dream 


THE   LAST   CHAPTER.  IQ/ 

Flow  through  the  flowery  meadows,   where   the 

ghosts 
Of  them  whose  glorious  names  are  Greece  and 

Rome 
Walked  with  him.     Then  the  dream  must  have 

an  end, 
For  London  called,  and  he  must  go  to  her, 
To  learn  her  secrets — why  men  love  her  so, 
Loathing  her  also.     Yet  again  he  learned 
How  God,  who  cursed  us  with  the  need  of  toil, 
Relenting,  made  the  very  curse  a  boon. 
There  came  a  call  to  wander  through  the  world 
And  watch  the  ways  of  men.     He  saw  them  die 
In  fiercest  fight,  the  thought  of  victory 
Making  them  drunk  like  wine;  he  saw  them  die 
Wounded  and  sick,  and  struggling  still  to  live. 
To  fight  again  for  England,  and  again 
Greet  those  who  loved  them.     Well   indeed  he 

knew 
How  good  it  is  to  live,  how  good  to  love. 
How   good   to    watch    the    wondrous   ways    of 

men — 
How  good  to  die,  if  ever  there  be  need. 
And  everywhere  our  England  in  his  sight 
Poured  out  her  blood  and  gold,  to  share  with  all 
Her  heritage  of  freedom  won  of  old. 
Thus  quickly  did  he  turn  the  pages  o'er 
And  learn  the  goodness  of  the  gift  of  life; 
And  when  the  Book  was  ended,  glad  at  heart — 
The  lesson  learned,  and  every  labour  done — 
Find  at  the  end  life's  ultimate  gift  of  rest. 


198       FROM   CAPETOWN   TO    LADYSMITH. 

There  I  leave  him.  Great-hearted, 
strong-souled,  brave  without  a  hesitation, 
tender  as  a  child,  intolerant  of  wrong 
because  he  was  incapable  of  it,  tolerant 
of  every  human  weakness,  slashing  con- 
troversialist in  speech,  statesman-like  in 
foresight,  finely  versed  in  the  wisdom  of 
many  literatures,  a  man  of  genius  scarce 
aware  of  his  innumerable  gifts,"  but  play- 
ing them  all  with  splendid  skill,  with  full 
enjoyment  of  the  crowded  hours  of  life — 
here  was  George  Steevens.  In  the  face 
of  what  might  have  been — think  of  it — a 
boy  scarce  thirty  ! 

And  yet  he  did  much,  if  his  days  were 
so  few — "  Being  made  perfect  in  a  little 
while  he  fulfilled  long  years." 


THE    END. 


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